I Want to Knit

Desire is a state of mind, to want does not equate to action, and procrastination thickens into anxiety. I wanted to knit for quite a while now; I needed to do something with my hands other than the rhythmic dance of my fingers against a simulacrum of action a billionaire deemed to be my phone. My mind buzzed with flickering, hot, but cold images of what I should be doing every time I saw a photo-perfect image of the impossible to craft, the Fair Isle sweater, my mind created its own yarn-stitched palace in which, even as I laid in my sticky bed, face buried in a summer-impeding sweaty pillow, it still felt as if that Fair Isle sweater was all mine. Cut and weaved into its soft flesh, the white moon rose on a black, inky night. The hem was ever so perfect that it sent my crooked spine straight, my body tried to fit into it, tried to construct my bones, squish my viscera, twist my nerves until I could squeeze into the sweater behind my blinking phone screen, become what I wanted most, fit my identity as vast as the midnight sky, into the size of an image online. My eyes were dry from staring at the sweater too fondly, envy was bile, and fear of accomplishment worked as vivisection, dissecting my own worthiness for a crowd of my own conscious. The blackness of a wasted night overwhelmed my grey matter and turned me bitter. I wanted to knit like that anonymous adult; they were rich in the token of internet attention, fed plump and fat with congratulations on a completed project when I stewed in my hot room, stretching to do anything…everything. I wanted to manipulate complex weaves of perfection until I created something that would make others stare in awe. I would wear my sweater for others, my body a work of art; it would fit slenderly on my form, and my identity would be crafted, not by my actions, but by how my fingers worked at the needles speaking, by short glances, of a story in every knit and purl. I wanted to knit, I should have screamed, but instead, I muttered the words beneath my determined breath. It had been months, a year. I knew the basics, and so all I needed was the time. 

I moved from my bed, my forgotten phone, vanquished from the Eden of my attention, I wanted to be Eve if she ignored the apple. I stretched one foot after the other, sneaking past other obligations, I couldn’t walk straight, and I didn’t want to. I moved and danced over to where I stashed my unused yarn, towards the needles I promised my mother I would never lose, for they were made from bamboo, whittled down into a point, just so I could make something someone else would cherish for me. With crooked fingers, gnawed down just to my skin, bloody around square corners from nervousness and despair, I looked for those needles. 

I only found one. I lost the other. ‘’Oh well.’’ I shrugged and fell right back to my bed, scrolling past the photo of the sweater, I looked upon the next post: A stack of read books, each approximately 1000 pages, and 1 million years old.