Ode to the Stash

Under our dresser there are skeins and skeins of yarn protected from dust in a plastic bin — superwash, sock weight, four ply, 100% cotton — I have stashed them there, not in abandonment, but as a holding onto.

One day, my children and I will be snowed in on a Tuesday, my editors will grant me two week’s extension, and the laundry, already clean, will sit in stacks in a row on our neatly made, king-sized bed,

and I will pull from my project tote hand-dyed Shetland wool with flecks of hay in it that escaped the carder before the wheel. Use Judy’s Magic Cast On 12 stitches¹ on each needle. When I begin toe increases (knit one, make one),

work connections across stitches,² begin the foot, knit the heel flap, I will memorialize the long weekend outside Perryville. When I held for the first time the fiber in gloved hands. Imagined futures just like this.