Women like to sit down with trouble - as if it were knitting.

The line uses a domestic simile—“as if it were knitting”—to suggest a culturally learned habit of dwelling on distress in a familiar, almost habitual way. “Sit down with trouble” implies not merely encountering hardship but settling into it, treating worry as something to be handled repeatedly and patiently, like a handcraft. Read critically, it can be taken as a sharp, gendered observation about how women were socialized to endure and manage emotional burdens within the home, where repetitive labor and repetitive anxiety could intertwine. It may also be read as satirical: the comparison to knitting hints at the way trouble can become a kind of occupation or identity, sustained by attention.