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At fourteen, I taught myself to sew
on a Singer Featherweight,

which I was an idiot to trade
years later when seduced by a Bernina.

As a child, I made clothes, costumes—
things a feral kid would wear, or Huckleberry Finn.

The only tricky part of sewing is the fitting,
making clothes that fit exactly right.

The actual sewing is easy—it’s just
manual dexterity, patience, and precision.

Fitting is geometry and math.
Geometry comes to me easily,

but math is an old childhood enemy.
Its door remains locked. Why?

Because Mrs. E. was drunk, so the second grade
skipped multiplication and division in 1957?

Was that when the trouble began?
Does it date to the Summer of Catching Up?

The writhing and moaning
over the multiplication tables?

I was seven. He was my babysitter.
I wasn’t injured. No one knew.

I knew. He was a friend of the family.
It had nothing to do with math.

To me, the geometry’s simple.
You dismantle a body’s measurements

into shapes traced on featherweight vellum:
the sleeve, the bodice, the skirt.

The parts of the body reunite
when the garment is sewn,

and the dress or the pants appear,
held together only by thread.