12.22.2022

One Bright Flower — Coming Soon

Truth is so strange that I could not believe it wasn't the fiction even as I carefully sewed the squares of this quilt in my mind together one by one. Each one a gift from the universe. Little shabby seeming bits of cloth handed to me by beloved souls dressed up in stranger's skin. I understand the look in all of their eyes now. And feel how it must have broken them apart to not reach for me. To be so near me but to not have me feel more than a faint familiar glow but not know them by name.

By how they felt to me. I have been sewing for five years now.

Sometimes a single square or the pattern rising out of them as I carefully threaded them through was too much for me. And I had to put the whole thing aside because to know what I now know I knew made me feel like I was crazy. I see now that I am going to be able to wrap the world up in this quilt of mine that is finely formed of all of the labor and pain and chance encounters and choice graffiti and overhear snippets of songs and conversations. I guess that I didn't realize how beautiful it would be to sit here whipping the edges shut and see what I made by not giving up. I have cried and bled and sworn and gasped and spit and coughed and gagged. But it's beautiful.

And so I am. We are perfect my quilt of knowing and I. And now I see the end. The pattern rising up for me now. And the steps to where I am going are becoming discrete. Tack the squares. Tie the knots. Iron the thing. And begin. It is a miracle to see all I was given. That I was entrusted with by those who loved me but could only give me these little scraps of leftover yardage to let me riddle it through. Who had to let me sleep. As I must do to honor free will in those not yet ready for the quilt I carry within me. It is a one stitch at a time kind of miracle that I can see.