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last memory quilt
By Colin Dodsworth
assembling scattered pieces to make a lifework
by salvaging life out of broken connections frayed edges and tattered
ends and scraps from hand me down memories
dying for the day to wake up in the morning with your clothes on
phone ringing for the last three years of my life… emergency
room, test results, examinations, aunties & cousins saying last
rites, doctors, reaffirmations, bill collectors and old friends
checking in. everyone is calling for acceptance and redemption.
it's a curse — no one forgets, and regret is the bitter knowledge
of the decrepit selves you've left.
photo album under my arm listening, phone cradled in the other.
friend's passed on words hang like chandeliers in my hallways empty
pondering what it all meant to me weaving through my life let them
fold up like flowers and left me with memories stitching myself
together over their inexistence so much needlework I've got blisters,
and they're listening, its blinding the way their faces drift off
behind each blink sentimentally scarred in wrinkles in time, and
at least for all meanings sake: dead to me.
weeks gone by and I still ain't checked back in. drowning myself
in full glasses of water to keep the bottles of pills down
woke up this morning for the first time looked down with my clothes
still on me the smell of faint roses drifting through the window.
hung the receiver.
on the wall was my design almost completed now, the left ear still
missing... I clutched on surveyed every last detail down to the
scratch on the window. took one last breath and held on
9+13 ways to live on — like patched eyes on teddy bear lost
at age 5 in the depths of the bottom basement. stitches coming out,
half of his face falling down, softer than I remember, but his heart
still works; tear jerking image in flannel packed neatly into box
next to my parents' completed quilts, a song of remembered beauty
slowly lilts up, and the flower in the cup of my mom's picture forever
wilts. Stale warmth of sun breaking in details through dust falls
on the nape of my neck let in through light of the basement window.
Resurfaced down there to return: proper misplacement of a few found
objects, fulfill one last lost promise reclaim a few chosen childhood
memories and a last chance to dance with something dear to me. the
aura of her presence grew stronger in my step whisper courage into
my breadth walking up the creaky steps to heaven's landing. last
foot lead by the other walking empty handed toward the sun
three letters read along my beaten brow speaking A, I & D; followed
by S's hissing scrapes filling in silences. Sh*t, I'm thirty 5 with
gray hair on the cracking painted porch with cookies for the neighborhood
children, we congregate in front of front yards discussing passing
time and coincidences, until the sun swings around again, into position.
remembering in the gloaming, laughing back on instances pulled taught.
seems like everything comes back to passing resemblances of the
first things we saw.
Counting back down steps taken through living: journal scrawls
last Tuesday October 27th passing greetings to strangers walking
home in the rain shivering; 28th of November, Thanksgiving, and
a day to remember, "No thanks," to garlic mashed potatoes,
let them pass, but I watched his face change in the bowl reflected
off the glass as we said amen, showing the bare-stricken strain
growing with that lump in his throat. "A sin," my mother
told me — I palpitate my heart pounds, I race my tongue around
those last words holding them, and let them sink off into sound…
my first memory is: mom cut her forefinger chopping celery ran through
the kitchen following blood drips. the first time in the closet
caressing the softest flesh I'd never seen; at age five I leaped,
never quite sure to touch the ground, scrapes bled so slow, we'd
sit and watch pain scab over, emotions washing over me, healing
the way time does to last Tuesday. this is the fabric of life.
Nobody is gonna be in the kitchen as I come down the stairs in morning,
never had kids
this old house is like a hollowed out piano, amplifying my every
step finally feels like home even if I'm alone and unkempt
no more fears of falling, walking up stairs, clutching memories,
bitter patchwork of a lifelong, your most sacred masterpiece realized
only near the ending that you've been walking with brush strokes,
having picked & chosen all that you're remembering. along the
way we made stitches rose-tints engraved patterns, mind making a
memory quilt, rich folds overflowing with salty rivers square patches
silk a dark runs through it waist deep in embroidered old embattled
heartsleeves, overflowing with down
feathers until bursting at the seams. Bittersweet watching the sunrise;
moths carry my dreams away on fluttered fingertips. softer than
I remember and, worn at the edges;
life is in the sweetest moments like the wrinkles
Looking down on the winding staircase that lead me here
I'm knocking on heaven's landing for the door to let me in. the
music is sweet drifting through cracks in the walls.
the puzzle is finished; laid on the crocheting table, a face of
oft unspoken beauty her glasses weave between her ear and strands
of gray hair, Ceremoniously hanging above the sewing table. Scooted
the chair by the door; placed as just how I want to remember it,
and for the world to receive it. Impeccable to life's last little
disorders, placed my shoes by the foot of the bed above the dusty
floorboards… Soft footprints through the hallway leading up
to the window I'm leaping up and out for God to catch me
— Colin Dodsworth graduated Youth Radio's class of Summer,
1998. He attends Hampshire College in Massachusetts.
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