Edges

Van Gogh’s Cabin: A pieced shweshwe quilt by witchinawardrobe— photo by author

She pieces the quilt painstakingly,
each edge clean, every seam flattened,
angles and points aligned,
The easy perfect fit, hides all trace of struggle
so much tucked away behind the scenes.
Kaleidoscopic stories, told in color and in shape,
geometrically precise.
Memories, translated to tangram,
pronounce intention, where in the heated moment,
choice and chance turned on pivot points
patterns bloom, serene and ordered
direction and sense established
like roads cut through the wilderness.

I’d move the pieces thus,
not leave it up to blind and fickle fate
among the puzzled pieces,
hands reaching find,
edges traced, until,
fingers twined, we meet

and in that central moment
the twirling, whirled thoughts
becalm.

Once pieced, the quilting binds.
As in the dawning or the dusk
we draw our lines
crayon trailing, tracing paths taken,
sometimes the lines are walls
other times words we pass like notes in…