Milkweed Cordage
2025My landlord decided to cut down the milkweed in front of my house. It was the first week of October so at least any monarchs or cocoons were hopefully gone by then, but the seed pods had yet to even open and aphids were still sucking sap from the stems.
But there they were, cut and thrown into a haphazard pile on the brick sidewalk.
The white sap of milkweed is meant to act as a defense, yet all it could do now was make my hands itch.
I couldn’t leave the milkweed to be trampled into the brick pavement, and wanted to find a use for the stalks, cut for no purpose. I gathered them in brown Trader Joe's bags, fitting in what I could, and brought the rest to the small patches of soil and grass behind the house so they could at least decompose in peace. The seed pods held shiny fluff and seeds that I could sow, the leaves I stripped off and added to the pile out back to help enrich the soil, and with the stems I made cordage.
As you twist and rotate the fiber cordage almost acts as this vessel. A place to hold ideas or wishes. A way of almost embedding parts of myself within the cordage as I make it.
I was still 21 when I made this piece, the same age that my mother was as she held me in her wedding photos. As I mourn for this milkweed it becomes a way of embedding and letting go of other grief.