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Keeping Quilt- from last June

A keeping quilt to keep and kill, to wrap around you in the darkest moments and to warm you with a woman’s love. I kept you in my heart so we could bind ourselves together. Our keeping quilt was a hooded sweatshirt- it had holes in the sleeves and patches on the arms and reeked of pot and cigarettes. And I would wrap you in it and hold you close, in the remnants of the bathroom light that crept through the cracked bedroom door. Your prodigy fingers caressed the back of my hand and I told you we’d always be together.

The killing fields were behind your house, were on the border of an abandoned Amish farm. And men rode by in their hats and beards, the clicking of the hooves and the pounding of your chest ringing in my frozen ears. November was cold but your body was warm, hot underneath your wool skirt and sweater. Your school seal covering your right breast, I lined up little deaths for you on the border of your father’s land- your mouth open, your lips parted, perhaps you took that moment to forget your Bible. Perhaps you took that moment to damn us both to hell. Your father damned me, he lined up a great death the first time he met me. He did the killing in a simple way, taking what was his, stealing what was ours. The wizzing of his Chevy tires on the fresh blacktop, the clicking of his truck on your asphalt driveway. Trucks do not click like hooves- your heart beat in panic, not ecstasy.

I stumbled off from the massacre morally wounded, a heavy load in my knapsack and your sweater on my back. The distance grew longer in the dark and my betrayal was perhaps the greatest death of all. I died on the road to the Lancaster Bus Depot, your father killed us in the house with his scripture.

The keeping quilt came on your wedding day, in a pure white box with a silk ribbon- the first time I’ve ever seen your mother happy. The killing field was the altar where you swore your love and purity and you denied everything we were for years before. Your keeping quilt will keep you safe and keep them blind and your children happy. Your keeping quilt will keep me and us away.