My Mother Buys Cashmere in Israel

Darby Myr

She barters with the shopkeeper

pulls up photos of me and my sisters,

compares our complexions to the colours available

Does she know Kashmir is a valley of blood?

Wool pulled from the bellies of goats

supple as the arbitrary lines drawn on a map,

 fragile as the fringe between two nuclear powers

She will buy four buttery scarves, fold them

cloud-soft into her luggage

delicately, firmly, precisely

the way mother’s do

Does she realize Jaffa was once replete with orchards?

That in Ireland, an insult for their occupiers

comes from the name of this place

the fruit imported, baked into cakes

and thrown back in the face of Orangemen?

When she returns to the penthouse

she will slip off her sandals,

try to wash stolen Palestinian soil

off her tired feet

Does she care the water is blocked from Gaza?

Before the war, so were wedding dresses,

high-top sneakers, now baby formula

(she’s told me I won’t speak on it anymore)

On Christmas, I will open the box

the one she chose for me is cream,

embroidered in paisley

– originally a Persian symbol,

the cypress, resistance –

my mother will wring her hands

the usual complaint, I probably overspent

and I will hold the beautiful milky scarf,

one long thread of blood,

and agree,

the cost was unimaginable

Author Bio

Darby Myr is a queer writer, textile artist, trained anthropologist and tree planter. Her work is forthcoming in SQUID literary, Trampoline and Qu literary. She is based out of Montreal when she is not stuck in the teeth of the northern Rockies.