Written piece
Life is a garment
Enongene Doris
Cameroon
About this piece
The poem "Life is a garment" is about the importance of community. How our independent lives are like garments,and when we get torn but challenges, our community comes in as threads mending us back together. Though we are in pieces, the diversity of love we get is art like.
LIFE IS A GARMENT
It is not a new custom
The likening of life to non-life
We have heard it said
That life is like a river
Like salt, like air, like death
So, it won’t be strange if…
I said life is like a garment.
One that gets worn out,
Endlessly patched up as the years pass
With a rainbow of threads
Each playing its own vital part
To hold it all together.
At least that is what my life feels like.
Hail and rainstorm, leaving no room
Even for an umbrella above my fragile scalp.
Sun burning off my skin, scar after scar
Leaving behind what ointment can’t fix.
But there they come
In the most pretty of colors
Hands that gently piece back together
Lending me pieces of their own clothes
Stitching me up with invisible threads
Invisible yet I see them clearly.
One is called kindness, she is green
And there is the orange patience
The yellow warmth and - blue silence,
He always feels like still waters.
I can’t forget about black, the regrets
A key piece to my compelling puzzle
Though I never let her stay too long.
Lest she makes it impossible for me
To let in the final thread
The one that completes my…
Messy and yet beautiful work of art.
Her name is love and she is red
And maybe a little weird
But I like how she is loud
How she drowns out the noise.
Life is a garment worthy of runway
And we are pieces in a collection
One that can’t be recreated
Each,one of one
And aren’t we just so fortunate
That something so rare
If ever… whenever to tear
Can be put back together.
How lucky are we with threads?