Patchwork

As children,

we stitched torn worlds with hope:

buttons of belief, threads of apology.

Every rip looked temporary then,

every wound, repairable with kindness.

Childhood dreams of fixing the world;

coming-of-age learns to live in its cracks, 

to step around the broken,

to mistake survival for sophistication.

Then time arrives

with a rusted needle

and teaches us fashion,

how to hide despair in design,

how to make ruin wearable.

Now we call the tear design,

the scar character,

and the surrender, growing up.

Every now and then

somewhere beneath the fabric,

the ghost of a child still tries

to stitch the world again.

The world revolves nonchalant

burying ghosts in a motion blur.