Stitching the Bride

       I demand a creature of another sex,
       but as hideous as myself . . . 
                      — Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

And sleepless once when the needle slipped, he could not
say whether it pierced his hand or was at that moment 
born from it, stitching 
her even through his dreams, the knots
invisible, revelatory: asymmetrical 
breasts, knuckles, eyelid flaps with their little fringe, 
and she all the while coming nearer, 
approaching with incalculable slowness 
to join him in the fleshly sampler 
where a seam invokes the soul. 
He belongs to her. 
He is either her mother or her only child. 
And the other one peeking hungrily through the lattice 
must be her twin, he looks so much like her.