Patchwork Dreams

Shuffling past the empty neighbours in slippers stretched from wearing extra socks through the winter, I look for a place to sit at peace, sheltered from the still chill spring breeze and the possibility of intrusion from the tea garden across the cobbled street.

Conscious of wearing what might seem bizarre to some, my clothes brighten my mood and help pull me through my day. The patchwork of my pants reminds me of my stitched mind, held together with fragile and worn threads. Pieces of the past, captured in squares, and strung together in a loose framework of ever shifting patterns still bright with hope.

It does not matter that the small square of garden that is my refuge lays tumbled with last year's debris. An old mirror, its face turned to the wall, leans beside a pile of potential kindling that never got used, and includes a broken bed frame left by the fleeing neighbour. Delicate pink weeds spill from a split bag of compost. The primroses poke their heads through the moss and ferns that cover the cracked and broken tiles and tumbled walls of my life.

Metal bars, still cold, strike through my pants. A rusty gazebo stolen from my neighbours after they had fled. That is how things work in this place: we pick up things discarded by others and stitch them into our own lives.

These scattered memories of last summer trace their fingers through my thoughts. Patchwork illusions playing out their dreams as the spring sun spills down upon my face.