Patchwork

Take a look at these hands,

While they appear clumsy

And meaty,

Do not be deceived.

See, while I've been waving them around

Awkwardly pretending to know what to do with them when performing poetry,

They've already been in and out

Of each of your pockets.

I'm a thief.

I steal indiscriminately,

Wallets,

Loose change,

Knick knacks,

And countless parts of you.

See,

The key to being a master thief is to take what won't be missed.

So, while you cling to your things,

The car you drive,

The watches you wear,

Those shoes you bought uptown,

I steal your stride.

I see the way you cock a single eyebrow when you're baffled and think

"Damn! That'd look great on my face."

So,

I take that too.

I take your taste in tunes,

The way you bump Beyoncé in the best of times,

And Conor Oberst when it feels like your life is crashing down around you.

I take the tales you tell,

Of late nights spent with Stephanie Sorrenson in fragrant forest glades,

Boasts of boyhood battles

Ending in bloody backyard brawls.

I even take the hardest times, meager Christmas mornings your mother couldn't scrape together enough dough to fill an empty stalking, let alone all those other

Empty

Spaces.

I take your stories,

The ones that make you interesting!

Soaking up every

Special

Piece

Of YOU,

To fill the porous parts of me.

Then, when I get home,

I lay out pieces of other people's lives to bathe in tears and tannins,

And soon,

I start sewing,

Weaving all of you together,

Into a grizzly leather face.

I become a nightmarish

Patchwork

MONSTER,

Made up of both the fictional

And the familiar,

And though in town

I may be greeted by nothing but torches and pitchforks,

The truth is,

This act of falsified completion,

My corrupted creation,

Cobbled together with nothing but these clumsy,

Meaty,

Hands,

Well that's the closest thing to an act of God,

Any of us will ever see.