Seam Stress

The heaviness settled in like an anvil being dropped on me. I couldn't take the fog inside my head and the lead inside my heart anymore, so I sat in the sun to melt it away. I wanted to sear every surface until I couldn't feel anymore. What kind of life is that, though, to never feel anything? To never feel the joy of love; the way it wraps its arms around your heart and traces its fingertips along your veins? Even the pain of looking back at love's scattered memories is necessary to understand how beautiful the feeling once was; how lucky you were to have ever felt its lips press to your cheek, its breath collect in the hollow of your neck. Love does these things, sews itself right up inside you to close the holes within.

You'll be told you'll find another. You'll be told to go, go and find happiness because all this is, is hurt, and nothing else. The problem is, your heart doesn't understand the complexities of bad timing or fear or settling for another because of low self-worth. Your heart only knows love, even when your brain tries convince it otherwise. You can't outsmart love, logic is the lesser. Even a 9 yr old will tell you the same, that it doesn't make sense to not be with the person you're in love with. I know, I know.

You could try ripping at the seams, pulling the threads from deep within without tearing yourself apart. I've done it before, little by little, stitch by stitch. I've unraveled the embroidery and survived without too many pulls and defects in my fabric. And I've learned the feel of my pattern, hemmed up my loose ends, and made a better fit of myself. But I crave a careful hand to reach deep within my fibers to alter me in ways I can't do on my own. I need to be folded and pinned, cut and pieced back together, matched and paired up without counting arms' length; I need to be part of another.

I've worn love like a second skin; matched our needs and offerings like buttons notched perfectly, holding us together. I've watched threads fray and buttons fall. I witnessed you pulling at them in nervous habit, while tugging opposite sides close together over your breast, trying to hold in the very thing you were releasing. I've had your hands smooth over my rough edges and find something beautiful, and then discard me, because what's new is unknown and what's old is comfortable, even if the fit is no longer right.

I don't want to be a patchwork quilt of collected losses. I don't want to be worn by another. I just want this fixed...somehow. But I've been released; never really even claimed. And I sit now, tattered and missing the threads that made me whole, losing parts of myself through the moth holes in my heart.


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<sup>8/13/2013

Copyright © 2013 Jen Fowler
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