Threading Instruction

my mother owned two thimbles 

unadorned metal coverings

for the times she mended my

father’s socks or shortened

the sleeves of his long sleeved

white shirts or sewed clothes

copied from magazines or off the

racks of high end stores 

she taught me how to hem,

use an open running stitch—

and how to thread a needle— 

first she wound the thread around

her finger and tugged until it

cut loose from the spool

then she moistened one end in her mouth

until all the stray ends came together 

she twisted the damp end until it formed a point

and picked up a needle and threaded it

through the slit on the first try—

only then did she warn me to never

sew a hem on someone wearing the garment,

“It will,” she said, “ make you simple-minded.”

my grandmother had warned my mother 

and she passed it on, ridding herself

of those words, of the warning—

now it belonged to me


April Poem a Day 
Prompt: use thread in the title of your poem