Quilting and other forms of heartbreak

Let me tell you something about my parents

Let me tell you something about divorced parents

Let me tell you                    

About how no house is really home anymore

And when you hear yourself say

I’m going home

You have to ask yourself

If you will ever stop driving

Let me tell you

About how loving your parents doesn’t always mean

Together or at the same time

Or even in the same way

Let me tell you

About how going home doesn’t always mean the same place

And sometimes you say it

As you are both headed to different buildings

And how your heart aches

How you wish it wasn’t that way

How it feels like you are currently tied together

And with each step the tugging feeling gets worse

And how that

Makes you cherish your relationship that much more

Let me tell you the difference

Between having loving parents

And having loving parents

Because my parents are so solely devoted to me

So devoted to the time I spend with them

So devoted to the patch work quilt family

They are still trying to hold together

And on some days it may feel like my heart is being ripped in half

But on other days

It feels more like there is more than one heart

Beating in my chest

And those are the good days

I have never been so loved by total strangers

I believe you call them

Step parents

And step siblings

But let me tell you

With all the pain of a divorce

All the disagreements

All the terrible days

All the off days

All the bad days

I still cannot look all of you in the eyes and say

I have it worse off than you

Because I wasn’t in foster care

Torn from one place to the next

I wasn’t unloved

I wasn’t abused

I wasn’t forgotten

I have so many siblings now I don’t even dare

To try and count them

But I know them all by name

I know them all by heart

I know them all

And they know me

Let me tell you something about being a child of divorced parents

I will always be better at resolving issues

I will never be greedy

In fact I will never ask for anything

Because who would I ask

You ask your mom

She says to ask your dad

So You do

And He says to ask your mom

But you don’t know how to tell them

That you don’t really need it

You never really needed it

You just need to feel loved

So can we all just forget I asked

Slowly your forget how to ask

You forget that anything other than

Oxygen and love is needed

Let me tell you something about growing up around divorce

Your life is about learning to love

About how to make the perfect quilt

About how to thread a needle with red thread

And how to make sure you stitch all the pieces of fabric together just right

when people ask...

When people ask what I am

I like to say I am a writer

Not because I understand plot

Or because I make the most realistic characters

Because I don’t

When people ask

I like to say I am a writer

Because poets breathe air back and forth

between earth and the heavens

inspiration filling their lungs

and making its way through their veins

and sometimes it feels like my breath

doesn’t even reach the stratosphere

like its left somewhere in the clouds

wondering where it all went wrong

when people ask

I say I am a writer

Because poets break spines with words

And I

I tug at heart strings

When people ask

I say I am a ghost

Because popularity never looked my way

Because I was never talented enough

to draw a crowd

Because I was never more

Because I was never a poet

When people ask

I like to say

That writing was etched into my every cell

That writing flows through my veins

like ink mixing with blood

When people ask

I say

That maybe it’s not poetry

Because maybe

it’s just my heart

When people ask

I say it’s ok

I always liked the view from the clouds anyways

When people ask what I am

I like to say I am a writer

Because I can’t imagine anything nobler

Because even if

 the angels and I never shared oxygen

I was born to be a writer

Born to be irrational

Born to be a spectator

But sometimes I swear

My voice makes it to the stratosphere

And that is something worth mention

sand, bricks and funerals

We spend our whole lives building up for one moment

The moment we die

From the moment we are born

Every giggle
Every almost word

Every cheeky childhood action

Every date

Every chemistry partner

Every group project

Every yearbook photo

Every kiss

Every stupid joke

Every moment we have builds up and then disappears

Because people remember what they want to remember

And most of them will be nothing but dust

They will fall through the cracks

Or be swept aside

To make way

for memories that mean something

the memories that stick

become the bricks
bricks that build up the wall

That hides who you really were

Because people don’t talk about

 how she slept with her dog

At funerals

They talk about how

she was so sweet and perfect and friendly

People don’t talk about how antisocial she was

They talk about how she was so kind to everyone she met

They don’t talk about how

she believed the wind would take her away

They talk about how often she climbed trees

I’m not fond of funerals

Because funerals are for the living

But poems are sometimes for the dead

And although I fear my funeral

will be full of crying people who said I was perfect

I hope there will be someone who knows the true story

They would say I was a fighter

That I always hoped to be something more

that I love the feeling of acceleration

and in another life

I would love to be a race car driver

but in this life I lived to be a writer

because I wrote letters to the moon

and cried into the wind

when it didn’t take me with it

that I had so much to loose

but nothing to gain

because poets aren’t worth much

and I
I always wanted to be something spectacular

I hope when they turn the last page of my life

They don’t forget that

That every day I feared all I would ever be was

Mediocre

me·di·o·cre

ˌmēdēˈōkər/

adjective

1.    of only moderate quality; not very good.

"a mediocre actor"

synonyms:

ordinary, average, middling, middle-of-the-road, uninspired,undistinguished, indifferent, unexceptional, unexciting, unremarkable, run-of-the-mill, pedestrian, prosaic, lackluster, forgettable, amateur,amateurish;

Because I don’t want to be forgotten in all the lies

I don’t want to be forgotten in my perfect baby girl

I don’t want to be forgotten

Because I was always a sucker for imperfections

And I would rather that you remember

I slept for way too long

Or that I may or may not

have sucked at cooking in the past

Or that I looked really cute when I woke up

Not a pretty cute

But an adorable bead head sleepy eyes cute

That I was obsessive

That I may or may not

have stopped playing an instrument

And stopped drawing

Because someone told me I was no good.

That I read so often people wondered if I was ok

That I ate chocolate so often

My mother thought

I was giving myself health issues

That my dreams were terrifying

And messed up

and I have always wanted to forget them

But I never could.

And I’m no good at impressions

So likely no one will re member me at my funeral

My first kiss will not be there

None of my project partners will be there

No x boyfriends

Not a lot of friends either

I hope a certain one or two will show up

My family will be there

And most of them will pretend they know me