I didn’t tend to the hole in my sweater
till it worsened. It languishes
inside out, arms akimbo
in the must-mend pile.
Even these repairs are only
as real as I believe they are.
I think I live in the real world
though I perceive it from inside
cells, bacteria, fungi, and viruses I call me.
I believe forces I cannot perceive—
magnetic fields, infrared light, radiation—
are also real while at the same time
I barely live a truth objectively real,
that we, all of us, the living breathing
inhabitants of this tiny exuberant planet
are entirely, irrevocably connected.
Everything depends on everything else.
Although it might not matter, for real,
if I mend this sweater, I choose to believe
it does. I pick magenta and orange thread,
wend them across the black sweater’s gap,
make what’s rent apart, whole.
—
Laura Grace Weldon lives in a township too tiny for traffic lights where she works as a book editor, teaches writing workshops, serves as Braided Way editor, and chronically maxes out her library card. Laura was Ohio’s 2019 Poet of the Year and is the author of four books.
