Markings; Double-stitching

by Linda Buckmaster

Markings; Double-stitching
After a painting in Lesia Sochor’s “Garment” Series

Begin between the clavicles.  You know
the place; it’s marked.
Cast downward like a pendant
between the breasts
to thin skin over
breastbone
now healed.
Right here
the arc, arch of scar
before it turns down again.
And right here, the blue dot
tattoo stenciling the trail,
and another here.
Here.
And here.

Body
Bodice
Bosom
Breast

First, one hundred and four stitches,
a heart once cut open,
tiny crude dots —
dot and dash
darts
dividing line (now so old and worn).
Choose your path, pattern,
veer left looping
stitching over
thin skin of breastbone
now healed.
And years later, marked left breast,
its own stitching
veering left
looping off-track
a knot beneath the surface, they found,
beneath the skin
of breast,
bone now healed.

No one thing but layers
of story: epidermis, dermis, hypodermis.
A trail of tears
precise as surgery
incise incision
ragged root edges darted
below the clavicles.
Drop
down
like a pendant between
breasts
stitched through
one hundred
and
four
cuts, pokes, push through and pull.

No pattern.
They had no pattern,
an unmarked trail,
a heart with hole.
They imagine where breasts
will grow on this eleven-year-old skin
thin
as tissue paper
over breast bone, broken, opened,
now healed.  They’ll loop,
the lower loops stitched
like brassiere cups
rounded
custom-fitted
one side more generous than the other,
skin tissue-paper thin as dress pattern.

And fifty-two years later,
double-stitching.
the blue tattoos of radiation
over breastbone
over left breast now healed,
under arm here,
here, and
right here
a pattern, a trail of bodice   body   bosom   breast,
a stitched heart, a blue tattoo.
Now heal.