Growing up,
My dad taught me a valuable life lesson.
He told me that duct tape fixes everything.
When our dog chewed a hole in the tub,
He made a bandaid of duct tape to
Keep the water in.
And it worked.
He said that if duct tape didn’t
Fix everything completely,
Throw on a little superglue.
When I tripped and split my eyebrow open on a bookshelf corner,
He made a bandaid of superglue to
Keep the blood in.
And it worked.
He said that if all else fails,
To trap it in zip ties.
When our barbies fell apart,
He made a bandaid of zip ties to
Keep the childhood sadness out.
And it worked.
Duct tape, superglue, and zip ties.
The superhero’s tools.
His magic.
I don’t think it was the tools,
So much as it was the wielder that
Fixed everything.
Made it all better.
Saved the day.
After all,
The tools of fixing can’t
Fix anything without the fixer.
But his theory still has a flaw.
When I fell apart,
Duct tape couldn’t patch me up.
Superglue couldn’t put me back together.
Zip ties couldn’t hold my pieces together.
If duct tape fixed everything,
Why couldn’t it fix me?
If superglue is a valuable option,
Why couldn’t it fuse me back together,
Like it did for my eyebrow so long ago?
If zip ties work so well,
Why couldn’t they hold my broken pieces together
Like our barbies when we were kids?
Maybe then I could stay whole,
Being held together by duct tape, superglue, and zip ties.
Maybe then I could stay whole.
Or maybe, I’d learn
The tools are nothing
Without the wielder.
About the Creator
Emery Pine
I’m a poet with sprinklings of fiction. I write with the soul, so I hope you find it interesting and relatable
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