And another, "Essential Love"

Firstborn Daughter Leaving Home by Mariah Hegarty

Your patchwork baby quilt hangs on the wall
pinned up with tacks, it circumference
too small now to warm your dreams.
An entire history woven in this fabric,
three quarters of a year's patience
waiting for flesh stitching itself
invisibly, cell by cell.

I see myself then, as I knelt, rounded
belly pressing against my thighs.
I matched couples of calico as seriously
as a child playing Old Maid. Each
square paired with its mate -

the peacock ground in this swatch
harmonizing with the red wearing
roses of the same hue. Six blocks
wide, seven long, bordered in shades
of faded denim - hand-pieced. The tracks
of stitches mince in even lines,
connecting the rows. I never doubted

I could sew perfection into the seams
of your life. Now I sit on the floor
of your room in the last of the day's
light and examine my creation. Quilting
binds the top and bottom to the warmth
in the center; I pulled those threads
taut as my unripe cervix,

dividing the squares into segments,
a pie cut into eight neat slices. Now
gaps have appeared in the perpendicular
where straight-edged lines snapped
under the tension-it's give that lends
strength in the end. From across the room
my mistake is obvious. A larger order

is completely absent, lights and darks
juxtaposed at random in no particular
pattern. That row there has all reds
 and blues of the same intensity -
maroon flush with navy, alongside
cobalt, next to wine. Unnoticeable
up close, from here the colors blend
in an unbroken strip. So intent, at twenty
on the details, I never stepped back
 to see the whole. All these years later
I must remind myself,
it covered you just the same.