Page 30 - HelensDress_Vamvakou2020
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MeASuRe
A MAP
AGes pass and
A WoMAN
arrived at the edge of the sea and stood there for the gods’ judgment, WAiTiNG.
My mother rolled up her tailor’s tape.
SuRViVAL is the thing we measure.
My mother cuts fabric with a pair of scissors she keeps for this purpose, against a green board marked with square inches.
of the world contains the following: -What we know
-What we do not know, but then we imagine.
The clothes my mother made hang in the closet. A tiny dReSS, lemon- yellow and flowered, heads their silent procession.
every dress has SHoRT-comings at first, it’s past the ankles, it pinches the waist.
With tailor’s chalk she marks the hem and addresses.
-The dimensions of time: how long it took Helen to cross the ocean
-A broken line
(which is where she looked back). -And a ViCToRy that cost too much.
i wonder if somewhere there is a picture of me wearing it.
With careful hands she picks apart her first errors, each new seam following the faint scarred fold of an ancestor.
“it all began here”, it says, or tries to, but that is a lie. or maybe a hope.
it began the way maps do, with so- meone who wanted to encompass something.














































































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