patterning words

I struggled to bend
my mind
into a pleasing shape—
one that captured words
weaving them
into a simple enough lace
that the empty spaces spoke,
crying out my answer
to a word.

I edged the pattern
with the forbidden
coming as close as I could
to meaning
without shouting it to the world—
it is far more difficult
to gather another’s words
and mesh them seamlessly in with my own
at times their colors
are too bright
to blend.

I bound in the ends
checking
double checking
rechecking
that every seam was clean—
there is beauty
even on the back of a pattern
where no one is meant to see,
tangles loosen the words
make them lose rhythm
and falter.

I gathered poems together—
sometimes the words flowing
as free as silk through a needle,
sometimes as painfully
as blood from my fingertips,
but as the days passed
the bloody pages
felt as beautiful as the polished
because I had done it.

I let my words go—
out into the world where I could
no longer call them back,
and then I read
marveled at how different minds
create different lace
from the same pattern.
I could never have shaped words
to the poems I read,
and that was rightly done.

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