Page 28 - Contrast2007

Patchwork

Ashleigh Smith

My mother kept in her sewing kit
the purple-handled scissors to use
for ripping the seams she had birthed
and, shaking her head, had
deemed as disfigured and irregular as I.
Laboring at the sewing machine
hour after hour, I know
she never meant for me to be
this: to fit no one,
to be so easily deconstructed.
But I was her first creation, and so
she kept me the way I was,
loose threads and knotted stitches, all
falling apart where I was held together,
seam from seam, a scarecrow existence.
My words unraveled from my lips
and never made it to another's ears;
one fine pull on the threads of my thought
and I would collapse into scrap cloth,
patch from patch.
So with my fraying edges, the evening
brought me to despair
and stitch from stitch I
began to slowly rip myself apart.

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