Mending Pile

There’s a pile in my closet:
                a skirt too small,
                a shirt too stained,
                pants too worn.
They wait, expectantly, for a transformation,
for deft scissors and clever thread,
a re-imagination of grace.

But I hang in the moment between
the death of the old and the birth of the new,
hesitating between despair and fear.

Yet —
seed becomes flower,
not by a tenacious clinging to what was,
but by a reckless hope in what is to come.
Surrender, sacrifice:
words to shrink from, yet without them
the present stalls, withers and fades.

For us, reclamation is not inevitable.
Our willingness is required:
to take scissors in hand,
(deep breath, now)
and begin in hope.