My heart was pieced together like a patchwork
Just like the rest of me
Made from parts of ticking time-bombs
Stitched and stapled together in a mass of voracious viscosity
Violently vilifying the way
The thread streams me seamlessly
from one person to the next
Each feeling they will be the center-ring circus master
Until they realize
The sewing needle is simply passing through their square

The seamstress ran out of string with me
Resulting in relapse burlap fistfights along the edges
Left me searching for salvation each time
The bells chimed to open the day
Left me in the company of
Misshapen shadows hidden along broken back hallways
Back-and-forth handshakes to make sure
The other was still there

Night after night, staring at your creation in the window
But not during the day because monsters like the dark
It’s not that it’s easier to sneak and scare
I just know the faces of disgust and terror
And I don’t need that right now
When that’s the same face I want to rip from the mirror

That night should have been stormy
For all the things that I did
To your masterpiece
Pulling at strands like they were nooses around my neck
Each time like removing an iron bar from my cage
Until the burlap sack flew apart flapping like vultures
Leaving nothing but the sheep in scarecrow’s clothing
Unraveling my sense of time until the clock struck
3 times an echo

Once for the creation of your abhorrent abomination
Twice for your meticulous sense of the grotesque
And three times for putting a soul you saw unhappy
Into a prison so much worse


When I was on your bench
My words came choppily and broken
Because I couldn't finish a sentence
Without second guessing everything
Waiting for a punishment after every word
So I wouldn't interrupt
The beginning of your sentence
With the middle of mine

You put my heart together piece by piece
Cross-stitching over the years of my childhood
Connecting a pair of glasses with a two-tone sense of humor
Building a bridge between arms wide open and a shotgun blast
But now the words flow fluidly
Because now my thoughts are seamless
Put together skillfully like a seamstress’s caress
No more anticipating the end before the beginning
Now that I've come full circle