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by Lauren Bledsoe
She just joined a knitting group
and he’s fighting the war on yarn.
 
She spent all their money on yarn
and it is winter and very cold and they have
no sweaters but he is a man of his principles
and won’t let her touch the yarn.
 
The war on yarn is hard to fight in America.
Police swarm churches and arrest knitters
mid-sock darning and this is a hard thing
but the law must be obeyed, thinks the man.
 
She is naked and freezing and very beautiful this way, also thinks the man.
 
The war on yarn is hard to fight but going very well.
Prisons are bursting with women looking at their hands.
Mass graves for knitting needles are being filled at an unprecedented rate.
 
One dark and snowy night he came home to find his wife
sitting on the floor knitting a sweater with a spool of red wool,
and when he yanked the yarn from her wrists, the air unravelled around them.