1.
She places the ragged scraps of fabric on the table, and carefully picks up her needle.
The pointed tip punctures the cloth, and she sews in a silent rage.
She imagines herself piercing Pinochet and his army,
her needle, a powerful weapon against the military guns.
Her fingers firmly grasp the fabric, determined to tell her story.
She first weaves in the remnants of her husband, who was shot by a guard during a protest.
The flow of his blood seeps through the red thread, bubbling on the surface.
Next, she embroiders her brother who was tortured in a labor camp,
the fragments of his body captured in the burlap.
She finishes with her lost child, who never returned home from school.
His woven face greets her as if he never disappeared.
The arpillerista knots the strings and cuts the thread of the horrors her family endured.
2.
The arpillerista weaves her days with the nights, waiting for her loved ones to return.
Each one of them is threaded into her heart made of yarn,
in strings she pulls each time she misses their presence.
She laces the minutes into hours, embroiders the days into months,
stitches spring with summer, with autumn, and winter.
Years pass. The woven cloth grows longer,
seasons loop into carpets. The fabric of time stretches,
and the burlap covers every part of the woman’s home.
To keep weaving, the arpillerista unravels her life of pain.
She never sees her family again,
only sees them in quilted memories.
3.
In the spring, fresh roses emerge from the dead bodies,
fresh roses woven by the arpillerista.
They rise from the ground,
flapping like flags in the breeze.
Their strength is immortal.