Patchwork Princess

I am the wild one, back from the road

The headstrong daughter with a hero complex

And a myriad of memories not quite where I wanted them

I call my mother with this information.

She is the patchwork princess

Pieces pieced together between chemo treatments

And I wonder if (aside from abdicated organs),

She chooses what she keeps

The same way she mended my torn garments when I was just a little girl

A swatch of fabric here, a new button from her box

Wash away the dirt but keep the daisies in the courtyard

With a wisp of yellow thread

A legacy she learned from her mother’s mother

Who learned early on after the war how to tie herself together

With her threadbare fabrics, what was left of them

And handed the needle down through generations

So I dance along the difference between broken and brave

Mom, I was certain crimson had to be your favorite color

After all the times your mother told us both

To paint New York red

And when my father tells me one too many things, I pretend to be a rabbi

Couriers of all sorts of extra information:

How to make shakshukah for a hundred guests

And that Rabban Gamliel was a little spunky

And what to tell a man who lost one too many things

My grandmother died young. Her mother died daunted.

I won’t learn to sew.

I don’t touch the needle.

As though I can leave a different legacy, and weave it backwards

You know I haven’t been to New York in a year.