Patchwork Prose

"You aren't the first patchworker I've known." "Of course," she nodded, and turned back, and angled down. Laid out there on her lap for all to see, was colour scheming on its way out of the box. Each box contained a comment of its own, in different shades of tone, which I read as if a line to me. It said "I'm thinking of the time." "I'm thinking of the time when we were kids, I'm thinking of the gaming carnivale." I countered with a thought outside her box, "I'm thinking of our kids before we stitched them in." She stopped, her needle poised above a hem, and cocked her head and blinked and green-eye stared. "Why, El," she said, "I'm not sure I really know to what I stitched them, where." Shrugging "I don't know." "My patchwork used to be a pillowcase, a kitchen towel, a businessman's tie, a fraying winter scarf. It used to be a handkerchief into which my Grandma cried. It used to be the colour of my heart, but then I added shades of turquoise, olive, lavender, laid out." "I do not like sad quilts," I thought, not said, "I like to see its brighter side instead." "Well, El," she said, "just turn it on its side, and lay it down to sleep, whichever way you like."