Lately, I’ve been coming undone, and
not in the quiet, soft kind of way,
but in the messy, hair-thinning or thread-pulling kind of way …
the kind that feels like relief until your fingers
poke all the way through the material, and you feel it all splitting
apart in your bare hands.

Some mornings, I wake up and feel like a sweater
that’s been worn through too many winters and lost too many threads,
like a sweater that used to fit just right,
but now slumps in the shoulders, stretches at the seams, and
frays in places that once felt whole.

But I’m learning that there’s something sweet
about these untying knots, and something stitching
about letting people see the unraveling.
I’m finding that’s where the real connection lives.
That’s where someone else can say,
“I’ve been there too.”

And somehow, that “hey, same here”
is the needle and thread that holds us both together …
like the fabric that wraps us through another day.

So, no, I’m not perfectly sewn together.
I’m still the same old bitter beaten motheaten sweater I was back then and will be again, but I’m not hiding the places where I’ve been split open or gnawed or color drained.

I’m still wearing me.
And maybe that’s enough.

What if unraveling didn’t mean time to toss out, but instead gave way for wise material to pull together something new?