Gifts From the Heart

 

Home-made,
something from the heart,
like the mittens with strings attached,
that my grandma threaded through my snowsuit sleeves
to keep them from being lost

like the faded blue quilt
she tucked around me at bedtime.
(Never again was a quilt
so comforting)

like the pink blanket
my mother knitted for my sister
that grew to twenty feet long
that my sister dragged around on the floor
till she was four,
when my grandma started 
slowly snipping lengths 
off of it
until it was four inches long,
and then,
forever lost

Home-made
like the drawings and cards
saved from little boys
who now live in the spirit world
to whom I never got to say
goodbye

Home-made
like the small heart my grandson left
in the dust on my daughter's printer
the week before he died,
to tell her he loved her,
still there, but fainter, now,
a message she wants
to stay forever

No purchased gift
can ever equal
these small gifts
from the heart
that we take for granted
until life shows us
how incomparable
they really are.

for Sumana's prompt at What's Going On - Home-Made. I didn't know what I was going to remember until I started tapping the keys.