Basta

Stitch in Time
is tired of saving Nine,

weary of forever
stepping up, peachy, alert

and prissy, the reliable fixer,
patcher, elbow-

thigh-, knee-, ass-
rescuer, savior swift

with dowdy dexterity,
steely purpose and

doubling pep.
Oh so tired

of Time—the whispering
vast, the winds’ splitting

infinities, the centuries’
eruptions, feasts

of error and woe. Stitch
is dying for a tacit

measure, a whole sabbatical
seamless and teeming

with sleep. Let them
do the binding—the straggling,

shaggy Nine—let the hinder
guard make their sluggish

way forward, heel-draggers,
bumblers who can beat

no one and can’t even walk
the chalk, make them

tack a while in Samaritan
syntax, tending, nursing,

salvaging—so that Stitch
may dream the slip, love

the long drool in some
unplowed pasture, lick

the loitering of blessed
raggedy-assed lastness and

thrumming disaster. She’s
earned it, she’s spent her

spool, this cursed solver,
long-eyed and fibrous—

let her loose from this
curious contract;

the whip, it’s beastly,
—it’s time.

Sara London is the author of The Tyranny of Milk. She has taught at Mt. Holyoke, Smith, and Amherst College.