i have nothing left for tomorrow everything is almost gone inside of my head
i am overwhelmed overtaken
i am just one person
i am struggling with this quilt that i have stitched over an entire lifetime
my fabric squares each a segment and time a lesson a book a song a smile anything shiny anything dull
i stare at my quilt
today it looks tattered
i see a little blood stain
i see big pools of blood
in my eastern squares where a lot of intersectionality began
i see struggle little wrinkles threads pulled to the side giving way
old old cotton that has traversed the generations
to the west of my quilt i see trails like the topography maps
blood gold hard labor fires metal beasts
i see part of the world coming together
a tic tac toe board the X’s over the O’s over here
the powerful always on top drawing the line over whoever they feel like
tonight i’ve turned off the volume on my tv set
i click from channel to channel and in my head i make up stories
i make up narratives and conversations for those people on the screen
those who are better than me
have spilled a lot of bleach a lot of indigo a lot of oil
a lot of grease a lot of dirt a lot of bills a lot of vomit a lot of shit
onto my quilt
i don’t know how i can keep myself warm or cold or hot
i don’t know how to press buttons day in and day out and wait to be told what to do
i have lost my needles in a haystack in the world ran by wires
i don’t know where i am most of the time
i try to hang on and i look at the trees and they have branches and leaves
i tried to examine how the leaf stem sticks to the tree
i try to articulate argue examine breakdown pull together any instinct
of how the tree and its leaves stay together
i don’t know anymore
when i look at butterflies or hummingbirds they look gray
when i look at the grass or the flowers they looks black
when i look at my hands or my face it looks red
when i look at my feet and my veins they look blue
when i pass through my doorway every night i’m alone
i feel like my quilt squares are falling to the floor
while doing the laundry i meet my neighbor
she’s covered i’m covered but we’re both naked
our quilts in our baskets all have the same snags the same wear and tear
i a professional i a quiet person she a mother she a beautiful hard worker
yet our quilts make us sisters
her quilt is jagged my quilt is jagged
we look at each other but we’re really detached
we are left there for all the civilizations to see
for all the viciousness to scratch at
and we look down and we say excuse me
after i take my quilt from the washer i bring it back home
it looks the same as i seek for solace looking at my corners of the ceiling
wondering when the cobwebs might come in again
it’s so dull with no life no little creatures to give me purpose
no little creatures to cup in my hand or cup in a cup
to put outside so that i can smell some kind of air
i returned to my tv screen and turned up the volume
and there are hundreds of different colors different words and different weapons
different levels of hatred and anger and selfishness
i look to see in a crowd
in the sea
wired humanity where the unpluggables are
where my tribe is not on any one side of an aisle
i will not be on any side for any style
i am who i am
i turn away and pick up my quilt with its little squares
i remember fondly when i was four and a fried chicken drumstick hit the bee and flower square
and left a permanent shortening mark
then i look up toward the middle of my quilt
a Bohemian style square i see where there was a cigarette mark left by an old boyfriend
on the other side of the quilt with the tasseled square with cuts in it where i hid my money when i was 12
to run away because life was too hard
little did i know what i know now
toward the left side of my quilt there’s a blue velvet square
in the middle bleach marks from days lost to Neil Y’s needles
then toward the top the darker squares with the solid bold yellow flowers
that’s where most of the cotton stuffing is
hand stitches coming apart exposing nothing
i think of my neighbor and how we both looked down
to me she’s my neighbor a woman
to me she is somebody she is a life
i look pass the cemetery skyline and i can see all of the headstones
flower vases peppering the hillside
those were people alive one time or the other
zigzagging in and out of my own life
i wonder what their smiles looked like
i wonder what their voice sounded like
abruptly my meditation cut by a police siren
another fight somewhere down the road
i draw myself back on the tv screen
orange men
white men
brown men
black men
pink men
red men
yellow men
all kinds of men
all kinds of women
everyone just as righteous as the other one
do they see me
do they see my neighbor
do they see her children
do they see her pets
do they see the babies in the neighborhood
do they hear their cries
do they see their daddies as they comeback midday because they lost their jobs
do they see their mommies trying to type on swipe screen buttons
asking for help to feed the family
do they see the old man
do they see the old woman
can they hear what they’ve experienced
what’s going on in Chattanooga
what’s going on in Beijing
what’s going on in Australia
what’s going on in Anaheim San Antonio New York or Canada
what’s going on in the Middle East
what’s going on i wonder
i stop as my voice cracks and quivers
when i lay down and close my eyes
i relish the knot in my throat the hot tears sliding down my eyes
as imperfect as i am as imperfect as i have been defined to be
by the powers who were and those to come
i can still see the humanity
and i can find hundreds of thousands just like me