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The Eternal Quilt
We are but patches in life’s quilt—
Tangled together,
Woven as one.
Pull on a thread,
Watch us unravel.
Ignore my thread, and I disappear.
Ragged, jagged knots.
Rocks in my fists.
Bound in silence,
Kneeling like a penitent saint,
Hands stigmata-bright on shattered glass.
A disciple of death.
I watch behind the curtain:
Frayed. Treacherous.
Mister looks my way.
Sad eyes, owlish.
Kohl-ringed and ostentatious.
Painted into empty space.
Looking like a child
But feeling like a crime.
I am an innocent—
At least, tonight.
Mister.
Master of life’s loom.
Each patch a life.
A love. A desire.
A lost love.
A tragic loss.
Broken hearts
Beat on
In the tempo
Of the buzzing loom.
One patch is a baby’s bib.
Another: wedding lace.
A hospital band, frayed and thin.
A birthday hat with candle stains.
A scrap of denim from work-worn knees.
A veil still scented faint with rain.
A theater glove with glittered seams.
A funeral shroud with stitched-in names.
And when the last patch finds its place—
Frayed edge beside a golden thread—
The loom hums low, then comes to rest,
Its task complete, no spool left bare.
The quilt unrolls beyond the stars,
Draped across time’s silent breath.
Galaxies hemmed in grief and joy,
Nebulas stitched from second chances.
We are but patches—torn, adorned—
Yet sewn into the sky’s own cloth.
Each life a color.
Each loss, a light.
The universe,
The woven intake of breath.
Copyright ©
Gabrielle Munslow
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