Sashiko by Merril D. Smith

                         a.pasquier CC


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Sashiko

For Barbara

She knows about hearts
has seen them flutter and fall from peaks, seen the line flattened,
a demarcation, the boundary of a new frontier
beyond the visible--

she’s felt the spirit go,
has comforted those left behind--
but her own heart is frayed, has been mended

over and over,

she has darned the tattered fragments, the threads visible, 
if you know where to look-- and some do--

they’ve sewn zig zag stitches
to elegantly bind the tears in their broken hearts.

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Merril D. Smith writes from southern New Jersey near Philadelphia, where she often walks along the Delaware River. She has written several books on history, sexuality, and gender, and she has had poems and stories published most recently in Black Bough Poetry, Twist in Time, Nightingale and Sparrow, and Wellington Street Review.

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