A tender, honest poem about invisibility, emotional neglect, and learning to love with loose stitches. For anyone who’s ever felt “not enough,” “Sutures” offers recognition—and relief.

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“Loose Sutures/Golden Repair”
by Shelly Moore Caron
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I wasn’t the homecoming queen,

never glamorous, never seen.

I was friends with everyone –

at least, on my end of the screen.

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I wasn’t born wealthy,

I’m not genetically thin.

These curves built fortresses –

protecting the quiet queen within.

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I don’t sing like an angel;

my voice is simply… fine.

Not strong enough to change the world –

just fluttering wings out of time.

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Still, I conquer what I set my mind to,

bound by stubborn grit and pride.

I’ll soar to the highest heights of mediocrity –

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.

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Hush now. Don’t show emotion;

people don’t like such things.

Unless it’s a stranger crying online –

easy to “like” and then proceed.

•

Everyone feels like the black sheep.

I do, and he does, and she.

We scuttle through crowds with stitches undone,

pretending we’re whole, quietly.

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We over-explain what’s wrong with us,

diagnose every rise and fall.

Feeling tired? Moody? Different?

There’s a label now for it all.

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A hundred years ago, they’d call women insane

for anything – crying, thinking, pain.

Drag her off; let the husband play.

Lock the door. Throw the key away.

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It takes us eons – centuries –

to learn the horror of our ways.

We repeat history again and again,

feigning shock, eyes glazed.

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Her father once said she was happy,

until suddenly, somehow… not.

“You just had to be seen, had to be heard.”

And something inside her caught.

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She understood herself as a grown woman,

the sound of her pain, clear as glass.

Not from all she’d endured in life-

but from being unseen as it passed.

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No one ever asked why sadness came,

or sat long enough to hear.

“Toughen up. Life’s not that hard.”

Dismissal whispered in her ear.

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They never checked the mind inside

the smiling, quiet girl-

ashamed, overwhelmed, partly convinced

chaos was somehow her fault in this world.

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So she learned her words had power,

a lighthouse beam to be seen.

She grew up to write them down,

pain trickling like water between.

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All her life she’s felt “not enough”-

as daughter, mother, wife.

As friend and lover, girlfriend, sister-

a pesky fly in someone else’s life.

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So she pushed first, to stay in control,

backing away at the first eye-roll.

Push, then cry, wondering why

love didn’t stay when she let go.

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Her eyes are open now, arms tired-

from decades of tug-of-war, she’s retired.

All she wants is to love and be loved,

to laugh, to make laugh, to inspire.

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She isn’t fully healed-

but who among us ever is?

We stitch our past into a gentler future,

doing our best with loose sutures.

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