Patchwork

Scattered amongst a bedroom with soft purple walls, 

posters and pictures covering each inch, are boxes. 

Boxes to hold determined essentials strewn about, 

prepared to journey beside you in life’s next phase. 

Clothing, framed photographs, light stings, patterned tapestries; 

decorations of a new room you’ll inhabit once leaves begin to fall,

away from all you’ve ever known. 

A piece of your life that did not make the cut remains 

tucked in a chest at the back of the attic. 

Confined by cobwebs and cameras whose film has long faded 

you’ll find a quilt, collecting dust rather than memories like it once had.

Tattered fabric, loose threads, faded colors; 

all motivations for its replacement by a silk, fleece-lined blanket 

easily found at any mom’s home goods store of choice. 

The quilt did not match your dorm room vision, 

but that was never the point of its creation. 

Rather than a nice exterior, what the blanket held mattered

more than the chosen materials to craft it. 

Ingrained in the patchwork was a story, untold and unfinished. 

Third row and four in was a square 

of paisley patterns mixed with several tones of blue. 

You would no longer feel old fabric if your fingers grazed across the patch, 

but instead grains of sand; 

ridges of a shell emerging from the tide; 

seaweed brushing against your ankles to bring frightened laughter of small children. 

Shoes that would be sand-infested for weeks to come, 

pails of stones chosen after your young mind’s careful evaluation,

the grill your father hauled along for light snacking. 

The family beach day from a decade ago, though it played in your mind 

as if only days prior.

Beside that is a patch with shades of yellow 

ranging from gold to buttercup to dandelion, 

yet all recalling a single feeling. 

One touch and you’re transported to a time of sunlight beaming down, 

though your smile somehow outshines it. 

Un-oiled swing sets grate against the ears, 

mud gathers on the soles of rubber boots– which inevitably track into the hallways inside. 

A garden grown from the spirit of your youth and your mother’s green thumb, 

the scent of pollen tickling your nose. 

Carefree. Restless. Limitless. 

The world was yours. 

On and on, each piece sewn together maps the child

who once danced to their own beat. 

Though the child you once were may have grown taller and wiser, 

they never move on. 

A stack of Russian nesting dolls, you only build from who you’ve been. 

The seconds slipped by, yet linger with the quilt: 

peering through the oven door with your grandmother while cookies rise, 

hiding under covers with merely a flashlight to see the chapter 

you were determined to read long past bedtime, 

hugging the one who made the world feel safer than it was. 

Every moment worth living, every thought in your head, every ache in your heart. 

We are nothing more than a quilt, woven together 

from what we’ve seen and who we’ve been. 

Those that touch our lives, 

whether during a second or a century, receive their square. 

They won’t be thrown aside for scraps, dejected to create space for the future. 

No, we grow with them, and some day, far from now, 

you’ll craft something more magnificent than you know.