Quilt
by Diane Thiel

At night this quiet covers me,
grown ragged on the center seam,
dividing all this history.
I touch the patches always known,
the ones they wrapped me in, passed down
for far too long for anyone
to still remember what was cut,
that it was once a blouse, a skirt
she wore the night he took her heart.
I touch the fields I thought I knew
and smooth the places healed into
each other, at the ridges sewn
with careful secrets mouthed for all
the years she couldn’t tell a soul.

A version of “Quilt” appeared in Diane Thiel’s
Echolocations (Story Line Press, 2000).
“Quilt” © Copyright by Diane Thiel.