The Thread

By Christine Fulton

It’s July and I’m holding
a photo of my grandmother.
Long dead now, here she is nineteen
and sitting in the middle of a river,
dry on stones, wearing a man’s bomber jacket,
a sundress and tennis shoes,
a bridge behind her glinting in the sun.
How strange to hold a picture of her
before she was a grandmother. Strange
to have no knowledge of her girlish voice.
When she was my grandmother she said,
“This is a running stitch” and
“Try not to lose the thread.”
Eventually, she said over and over,
“When you’re old it’s always Christmas.
It’s always Christmas when you’re old.”
Meaning, I suppose, that time collapses
like aging folds of skin,
resting layers of soft Decembers
upon soft Decembers.
So then it must be Christmas out on the river.
And those—holiday lights
lining the trestle behind
my grandmother-to-be.
I remember her hair like tinsel.
Mine is tinsel now, too.
Soon I’ll tell my grandchildren
that time is just one river,
one stream of grandmothers-and-me.
Listen—we catch each other’s breath.
Look—we will hold, have held, are holding now
each other’s hands.

---

Christine Fulton is an educator living in Northern California. She enjoys teaching literature and composition to students in elementary through high school. She is working on a debut collection of poetry inspired by all that’s small but mighty. A recent work appeared in One Sentence Poems.