ACT I: Collecting Jigsaw Puzzles

My life has been a series of jigsaw puzzles, the first as pretty a picture as you could wish to see.  It never occurred to anyone that anything could mar the image of a bonny baby in all her glorious honey-hued, gurgling perfection.  

They never found out who crept into the playroom and stole the first piece. It was only one little piece – the size of a sixpence on the baby’s left ankle.  Hardly noticeable. A pity though that such a pretty puzzle should be incomplete.

The next piece to vanish left a leaf-shaped hole in the baby’s back. Did someone accidentally knock over the board? Perhaps the lost pieces are on the floor or down the back of the sofa.

But if that is so, why could they find no trace?  Surely it had to be the work of a thief because it did not end there.

The next puzzle was a toddler.  How strange that the same pieces were missing here too.  Not only that, but a third and fourth piece had gone – the other ankle this time and now a tiny gap at one corner of the child’s mouth.  Why would anyone want to remove random pieces of the puzzle? And how did they do it without getting caught?

No one had any answers.

Successive puzzles depicting a panda-eyed schoolgirl, a shy adolescent, a carefully groomed young woman – all plundered by unseen hands – revealed more and more of the blank surface beneath and ever less of the subject herself.

One day I opened a new box and asked myself “Is this puzzle half here or half gone?”

There comes a point when a puzzle ceases to be a picture with gaps and becomes a blank space strewn with fragments like the excavated remnants of an ancient mosaic.

Would some archaeologist dig me up and fill in the blanks to show posterity what I once looked like?

The jigsaw of a woman in her 40s would have been quick to complete, since so few of the pieces actually connected. Scattered across the board, it was impossible to decide if they, or the space between them, were the real object of the exercise.

I suppose it all depends on how you look at it.

Over the course of 50 years my unplanned jigsaw collection progressed from Bonny-Baby to Can-You-Tell-What-It-Is-Yet? What would the next puzzle be called… The-Invisible-Woman perhaps?

If you think jigsaws are frustrating, try my next hobby…

ACT II: Painting by Numbers

Number 1 was the original skin tone, a light golden beige, my favourite pigment.


Number 2 was the colour of nettle rash, mottled and roughly textured.


This was closely followed by number 3, a stark white, applied almost symmetrically in random patterns, some clearly delineated, others splashed carelessly across the canvas like spilt milk. (No sense in crying over it. There is no cure. It won't **** you.)

There’s nothing quite like summer for bringing out the colours of a painting.  A hat and long sleeves were no match for the persistent sun and by the time the picture was finished, the numbered paints ranged from 1 to 20 with a different abstract brush stroke to go with each one. My canvas contained a tortoiseshell patchwork of shades from brilliant white to violet, golden ochre, burnt sienna, chestnut and scarlet.

And yet this was the height of my blue period.

I had to paint by numbers for 50 summers before I could enjoy my third (and final?) pastime…

ACT III: Joining the Dots

By sheer fluke, at the age of 51, I discovered the secret of the missing jigsaw puzzle pieces. They were there all along – just not visible to the naked eye.  


They had been starved into transparency but, as I began to feed them, atoms of them materialised like specks of golden ink on blotting paper.  Tiny dots like pixels on a grainy satellite image, jostling, overlapping and joining together until they looked something like the missing jigsaw pieces - if a little mottled with mildew.  

And gradually the mildew has faded - along with the sense of loss - to reveal glorious, even colour.

Of all the activities I ever found in the playroom of my life, the most cherished, the most miraculous, the most deeply longed-for and appreciated has been this game of Join the Dots - an unremarkable pastime, you may think (if you have never walked in my shoes), but one which has brought me on a return journey along a jigsaw road from
Almost-Invisible
via Can-You-Tell-What-It-Is-Yet?
past Half-Here-Or-Half-Gone?
by way of A-Pity-That-It’s-Incomplete
and finally – if not quite back to Bonny-Baby – then at least back home to a grateful woman of a certain age who can look in the mirror and smile to see her whole self.


   Vitiligo: A Play(room) in 3 Acts © August 2013 Vitiligo Protocol

I remember you telling me before that you saw yourself as a jigsaw puzzle.* I never understood you then because why would you compare yourself with a thing that requires pieces. You explained that you have 6 pieces in you, pieces that made you, created you. Pieces that were the reason for the person you are today, pieces that helped you function, in other words, pieces that made you whole. That was why you called yourself as a 6 piece jigsaw puzzle. But then one day, you told me all of those pieces were missing. You said someone or something took it away from you and you have no idea how to get them back. You explained to me thoroughly how they were removed from you. The first piece was removed when you were in your room one night, hearing your parents fight, yelling and arguing, telling hurtful things to each other. So you decided to put some headphones on and played some music so you wouldn’t hear their shouts but then they barged into your room saying one of them is leaving and you have to decide which one of them you are coming with, you pretended to not hear them but deep inside of you, even though how loud the volume was, it suddenly stopped without you muting it, because all you could hear was their love for each other slowly fading away. The second piece was removed when one day some unwanted visitors came into your house and they told you they call themselves as demons and that they brought you things that you cannot possibly return; you opened the boxes and see that those things were called depression and anxiety. The third piece was removed when your so called best friends told you they were always there for you but when you were sitting on a bathroom floor filled with blood and hopelessness nobody came to pick you up.  The fourth piece was removed when you someone told you they will help you find those lost pieces but one day she was just not there, and instead of finding the missing ones, one of the remaining was lost again. The fifth piece was removed when you saw him, the love of your life, loving another being that wasn’t you and when you asked why he told you he just couldn’t deal with someone who was like a puzzle that wasn’t solved, you were about to tell him you were once the one he was looking for but then he told you, oh scratch it, a puzzle that could never be solved. And the last and final piece was removed, because life took it away from you. And then suddenly all of those pieces were lost.


I want to help you, i want to do everything just to find those pieces. But you’ve got to help yourself also. You are the biggest help you need, and maybe, just maybe, those pieces can be found in the most unexpected places. Perhaps the first piece can be found when you’re listening to your favourite song and the lyrics felt like blankets that comfort you when it’s cold and suddenly it felt like home. First piece found. Perhaps it’s the feeling of waking up at 5:30 in the morning, feeling ******, and when you went outside, you saw the sunrise, and realised that somehow you can rise again like that. Second piece found. Maybe it was sitting in a cafe, sipping unnecessary caffeine, looking at the people who were passing in front of you, thinking of how much they’ve been through, and still surviving like you, and somehow that made you feel better, that’s why your face formed an unnecessary smile. Third piece found. Maybe it was when it rained so hard, but it doesn’t compare to your tears, you cried and cried, as the rain poured and poured, then the rain suddenly stopped and the sky formed a rainbow, you looked at it and think that maybe your tears can form colours too. Fourth piece found. Perhaps it’s when you can’t sleep at night, so you just look at your scars, before you thought they were ugly and disgusting, they did nothing to you but made you remember how much of a mess you are, but now you look at them in a different way, they weren’t battle scars, because battle was an understatement on how difficult the things they had overcome. And now you see them as a reminder of how much of a soldier you are. Fifth piece found. And maybe, it was when you decided to go to an art museum, you were fascinated by the wonderful paintings, then you thought, you used to be like those works of art; beautiful and important. But then you suddenly heard one painting, whispering you something, it said, a masterpiece is still a masterpiece no matter how broken it is. Sixth piece, and final piece, found.


So, darling, If by means life took those away from you, you should do everything to get those back. And yes, you will tell me, nothing can bring back those pieces anymore, but you can be a puzzle piece that is solved without the pieces you had before, you can find those pieces without asking for help, you can find those on your own, you can make pieces all by yourself. It doesn’t matter how fast you puzzled it out, the only thing that matters is that you solved it. *You solved the jigsaw puzzle. You solved you.  **And guess what? You will be whole again. You will realise you always was, and that is the reason you will not let anyone or anything, change that again.

we were puzzle pieces that fit perfectly...
but just belonged to different jigsaw sets..

Eyes stare...
Into nothingness,
The jigsaw of to be’s,
Arranges and rearranges;
Into an appeal of mirage...
Swelling the oasis of life!

And when the glare pierces,
Eyes blink;
The jigsaw settles,
Synchronized with reality;
Strengthening my mind...
To derive the quirky balance -
Between the could be’s ;
And the one that is!

Me and you
are broken
in different places
so that we
fit together
like a jigsaw puzzle

You so frenetic
so open
you are a hurricane
people always remember
when you pass through
venting your insecurities

Me so passive
not a care in the world
always out of touching distance
I am a rock
covered in moss
always numb

we fit together
like a jigsaw puzzle
and together
through our flaws
we make a picture
which is so beautiful

The world is
One huge
Jigsaw puzzle.

Everyone is a puzzle piece.
And just like how
Every puzzle piece is unique,
How the puzzle would be incomplete
Should even just one piece go missing,
Everyone on earth is unique,
And the world would be incomplete
Without any one person.

Except me, of course.
I'm merely
An extra piece.

I wish to see
The color of your eyes
The expression on your face
At dawn when you said goodbye..
A handwritten note good bye
Left on the side table...
This jigsaw puzzle
Took years to solve
Why did you say goodbye?

I wish also
Time would heal all wounds
But only time would tell...
Forgiving might be easy
Forgetting crawls while time passing by...
When will the clock stop ticking ?
I just wish to die....

life is like a jigsaw the pieces you must fit
has you walk through life you will find each bit
each and every corner that you around
each and every place a new piece will be found

put them all in place a picture you will see
and jigsaw of your your life how its meant to be
everything in life is there for you to take
to make it all come true this jigsaw you must make

I am a jigsaw puzzle…
Packaged, broken down and oddly pieced.
Vivid colors. A curious captivation.
Although… with time they have faded…and creased.

Handed down like an antique quilt.
Fragile and warn, only portions of my picture complete.
Left wondering if I will ever be seen as one.
Admired as whole, even with corners somewhat oblique.

So I set out on a journey:
Re-genesis of the soul.
Craving colors unimagined:
An apocalypse of the world of dull.

Along the way I caught a glimpse.
I unearthed Utopia.
A world lent only to dreams and fairytales.
Yet I couldn’t seem to give in and face this phobia.

I continued along my search.
This time with a new groove in my step.
Part of me wanted to turn back,
But that could’ve meant loosing the little I had left.

I felt something flowering within.
I may have looked away, but that moment a seed was planted.
Roots of strength embedding themselves into my soul,
A new chance at life finally granted.

Fresh oxygen to inhale,
As this life grows inside of me.
Battling with worry and yet no panic at all.
Something so charming and enormous, the world deserves to see.

Branches of love breaking through my surface,
A bungee cord tugs, than allots some slack.
Leaves of unwritten memories begin to evolve.
This budding life needs nurture…I need to turn back.

Before I can set foot to turn around…
Utopia at my fingertips.
Life, nurture…a wonderland unsought.
And that is all before the meeting of our lips.

i have one hundred pocket pieces, they are parts of a jigsaw i never had the patience to put together and i carry them with me. i walk around like i'm on a tightrope from where i am right now to where you are. i try to make it in one piece, but i drop pieces. i can't lose too many because they are the only things that fit together and they resemble our hands.
i remember,
the last time our fingertips touched (do you?) you let go of my hand and i captured how it felt to be held by you, a vision i replay like a memory tape stuck on repeat; do you think our hands were jigsaw pieces? (i do)
you let go and you got on a train and i emptied my pockets for you, a trail so you could find your way back to me but i am still walking a tightrope.
is this a circus act?
is this an act?
can we cut to the scene where my legs buckle underneath me and i freefall through bottomless clouds (i'd probably still be searching for your eyes, or your hands) and all of a sudden i land on my feet and you are beside me just like you have been the entire time and i feel those fingertips again lace their way down my palm and you smile and tell me you've been expecting me?
i've watched too many romance movies, this is what you told me. you told me real life doesn't happen like that, so why am i still leaving trails?
am i losing my mind?
it kind of feels like i'm too far away from home to know where i am but yet it's so familiar and i am so at ease because i am walking this tightrope to get closer to you,
just follow my trail,
please.

come back to me.

Lay back, baby
You fit so nice in the crook
Between my shoulder and my chest
Like a jigsaw finally fitting,
After so many failures

I had a feeling.
And so far it proves true.
Ever since the time you said
you didn't want to live together next year,
I knew
you had had your fill of me.
A nuisance and delusional twit;
I would abandon me too
if I weren't so attached physically.
My heart,
shattered, strewn across the fresh carpeted floor;
I desperately swept the shards into my hands.
Plucking the larger pieces,
I manipulated them as though working
a  jigsaw puzzle.
I cringed and the
tears
began
to
drop,
like the bass flowing from your headphones.
The pieces fell from my fingertips;
I realized the effort equates to
a person's ability to repair a broken mirror.
I,
however,
refuse to discard the shards
into the nearby waste bin.

my life is a jigsaw puzzle,

the pieces to this puzzle are the people i share my existence with,

time's ticking,

there're thousands of more pieces to be found.

Fiddly bits and
Mismatched shapes;
Come into my house,
Shut off the drapes.

I'll piece them together
This one and that.
But you don't believe in board games
So it's bound to fall flat.

So let us start from the beginning,
The corners and the bottoms;
Work inwards.
But do not be surprised
If you are not that missing piece,
But just a part of another's
Puzzle.

We always talk about those who
you will never forget as long as you
exist, but
I’m thinking of someone
who I’d never  be the same without
if you didn’t approach me
that one lonely night,
sliding into my life like
a lost piece of a jigsaw puzzle
all those years ago.

It's like that feeling
When you're a little kid and you've lost track of your parent at the mall
Running around aimlessly
Tugging at the sleeve of anyone who might be them
Who might be the one you're looking for
Might be safety in the lawless crowd
Might take you home

The escalating panic with every new face, every wrong face,
Every judging gaze
And seeing that the worst case scenario, you might die stuck right here and hopelessly alone

All I can think of now
As we walk across the bridge
Discussing feminism and things they never ever understood,
As you opened your mouth to catch a snowflake on that holy tongue

Is that I found you
You caught me on the tip of your tongue and I found you

I always hated how people say they "clicked"
But now I get it,
Not a click but that soft sound
Of the the last jigsaw sliding into place
That's what happened when I met you

I made sense

dear best friend,
Twin soul,
When they mistook us for lovers,
Or siblings I only ever felt flattered
To have you in my puzzle

You are the prettiest part of my picture

You are the best "click" I ever heard

You are a sincere "*******" to anyone who ever crossed me

You are everything I owe you
Everything I owe you

We're two one-sided cardboard pieces
Segments of a cloudy sky
It looks like we would fit together
But we won't
But we try.
But we try.

I am afraid
I am alone
I am unknown
I am labelled

Labelled 'Damaged'
Did I damage myself?
No, fate did that
Can I atone?

Atone? For what?
A disease that differs for one and all.
I know what I am, but choose not to
take the moniker, 'sufferer'.

Yes, I hurt, I tire, I cry, but
I cannot explain, and you,
you cannot empathise, you
don't have MS, the broken smile.

I look whole, but I'm a jigsaw
with a missing piece. That piece is
peace. Peace of mind, peace for my
loved ones, peace for me.

I know I'm a person, I know I have MS
I know I'm loved, I know I'm a *****
I know I'm part of a family, daughter, sister,
aunt, niece, cousin and most importantly Wife.

I will be whatever the fates decide.
I will not be a sufferer.
I will not give up.
I will be loved.

Do you remember when you were little,
how your parents would give you jigsaw puzzles just to occupy your time.
You'd open the box and it would smell like cardboard and paint and there would be dust sitting in the corners after you dumped all the pieces out.
I always started with the edges first.
Work along the outside and get a boarder, then fill it in.
But it seemed inevitable that at some point
You'd lose a piece
You would get to the end and search the whole house
Under pillows, under beds, in cabinets, everywhere
You couldn't find it
Eventually you'd give up and go eat dinner
But months later, it would turn up
In the same spot you know you had already looked
It would be there
Waiting for you
It's kind of funny really because now, years later, nothing's changed
You go to school and you're given a box
Filled with college applications and marriage and kids and adventures and getting arrested on that back road and falling in love with that person
You dump it all out and they give you until you graduate to sort it out
What do you want to be
Who do you want to be with
Where do you want to do it
Put it all together by the time you graduate
Get a plan
So you start with the edges
Graduate, go to this school and major in this degree
Move to this city, get this job, make this much money
But once you get the edges built you start filling it in
You fall in love with a boy who drinks too much and smokes unfiltered cigarettes
You sit on rooftops with him and you love him, God do you love him
Eventually you tell him you've got to finish the puzzle and you push him to the side
You fill in all the rest of the middle
Husband, kids, raises at work, vacations, red wine that you secretly hate, all of it
Eventually though you get to the end
The last piece
The piece that has happiness scribbled on the back in a blue ink pen
And you can't ******* find it
You look in your home and in your children and in your husbands wedding vows and it's just not there
Life goes on, you sleep in a different room and pretend to still be in love
For the kids sake of course
But one day you're going to be standing in a coffee shop
The same coffee shop you know you already looked in
And he's going to walk into you
Spill his drink down your blouse and murmur that he's still in love with you while you discuss the weather
You're going to find that puzzle piece
Just try to find it before you lose patience and cut something else to fit in its place.
C.a.l

he said,
you are a lost piece
of my jigsaw puzzle of life
that I have found now
I feel filled
and complete
and now that I have found you,
I will not let you go
away from me

But then he left
with a part of me
in search of
another
lost piece

Just stop
you may not know it
but you are taking me apart

Piece by piece
unraveling me with your tongue
until nothing is left

Not this
all I want is you
in every way but this one

To break through what you can't see
Seems like something impossible
Only time will tell
If you truly possess the power
Believe in luck, believe in chance
And all things will fall in their place
Whether by your side or not
Things happen for a reason
Sometimes good, sometimes bad
But time will tell whether it is either
So let it be, and you will see
The jigsaw pieces will come together

You broke my heart
And still I gave a piece of it to you freely,
Leaving me like a jigsaw puzzle
No one could ever truly complete.

if i could snap my fingers
and have you back in my arms
i wouldn't move a muscle
because you cracked my heart in half
and i still haven't recovered
you will never know
because it hasn't happened to you
and i hope it never happens
because putting the pieces
of your heart back together
is harder than any jigsaw puzzle
in the entire universe

Last week I was taught that
no matter how complex an expression may seem
if you multiply it by its conjugate pair
you will always end up with a non-negative real solution.
That is a metaphor for how we have learned to love.

I used to like mathematics, as strange as it may sound,
because memorising the value of pi was
somehow easier than forgetting the notion of you
and I thought maybe comprehending the mechanics of the universe
would lead me one step closer to cracking the combination.

In a world that spins at the rate of 27,900m per minute, a constant can prove tricky to find.
Hence, there is solace to be felt in knowing that even when it is all said and done –
when the final bullet has slipped from our tongues and we are left trembling
upon nothing but the rubble of our own destruction,
two plus three will still be equal to five.

In an attempt to clarify a theory to the class, my teacher analogised
that mathematics is like one big giant jigsaw puzzle:
everything always fits together perfectly in the end
Since then I have learned it is the method without the madness,
the passion for the predictable; it is everything - that love is not.

Not even the greatest mathematician in the world
has been able to measure how much a heart can hold.
There is no algorithm for how to make you come back;
I cannot draw a line graph on the speed at which love left
and even if I could, our gradients would never be the same.

I may have both halves of the bed,
but there is never enough space to fill it with.
If a task takes four hours for ten people to complete
and the same job takes five people twice that time,
how long will it take for a human to feel whole again?

Sometimes I think we are nothing more
than two parallel lines that accidentally crossed paths.

What is beautiful?
The sound
The structure
The negative space in bouts of apathy
What is right?
What is meant?
We were learning the reward of struggle
Becoming alive in a dead summer
Jigsaw puzzles in an alcoholic slumber
A cramp in the middle of my palm
Rub me the right way to resolve the qualm
Im not so sure
Im not so pure
Where does ecstasy and reality meet?
We coalesced
I cried
"These hands were made for YOU!"
You held me tight
Is everything we spoke obsolete?
Too much rings true and it’s out of harmony
Am I in love or just being lazy?
I know what I really want
But is it right for me?
Who’s to say?
God, fill me in on this game.

I’ve always believed
That I myself
Where just another puzzle piece
In the midst of a million others
But you were one in a million

Feeling like there was a chance
This common piece
Could be matched with another
That didn’t seem to fit to others
But I wanted you to

Truth of the matter is
There’s no two ways about it
However we try and try to make it work
No chance that we two pieces
Will ever complete this puzzle