A budding writer's collection

Patchwork quilt

I was but a baby,

A flickering flame in my lantern,

Swaying whichever way I was led on.

I followed them,

Looked up to them.

Their love was my ultimate protection,

Or, so I thought

Is it love to inflict harm on your cherished ones?

Is it love to deceive them when they couldn't choose right from wrong?

Is it love to use them at their most vulnerable and cast them away with indifference?

Is it love to make them feel unworthy of your love?

Realized years later, they were held together by safety pins and scotch tapes

But what right did they have to make me into a patchwork quilt,

Sewing new squares to hold the myriad pains?

I was but a child,

The lantern uncovered its calling,

It wanted to be anything other than the people it walked behind,

Tried hard to stay different,

But some threads inevitably shared the same taint

The lantern extinguished, the turbulence too strong to bear.

The baby held on to the familiar feeling,

Obedience was the solution for this cracking frame.

Maybe if the dissent was absent,

The pins and tapes might hold the avalanche a little longer.

But, the pins and tapes were worn out,

Years of holding the mighty winds will do that.

I was a teen,

The avalanche arrived with fierce fury.

The baby sought the familiar paragon,

Fictional in reality, but desperation holding it to be true.

Mind caged the effects of the storm,

A forbidden box,

Behind a twice-sealed door,

Inside a latched gate,

Covered by a dome of protective spells.

My safety pins still bent,

My tapes came undone, indifferent to the seals.

I am but nineteen,

And I pray with the same desperation,

Let my fantasy be the truth,

Let my existence be more than that of a patchwork quilt.