Quilt

A quiet lyric turns memory and injury into a small meditation on restraint, power, and grace.

The poem moves in clipped statements that feel bruised but not chaotic. Its world includes hurt, vanished laughter, work, escape, and a final effort toward calm, so the closing `as a flower` lands as a deliberate softening rather than a decorative image.

The title does more work than any line: a quilt is what you assemble from scraps of what wore out, and the poem assembles itself the same way — one stone on the lake, one jumped ship, one logging truck, the good laughter that vanished. The closing 'as a flower' is the seam that holds it. After 'power' it could have gone any direction; 'quiet, / as a flower' is the refusal to finish loud.