the pickpocket.

I am not a wordsmith, someone who carefully crafts their own terms and ideas under the pressure of heat with the anvil and hammer. Rather, I am a pickpocket.

I see words and fascinating thoughts everywhere: In the thick yet crisp morning air as people mutter and begin the arduous process of waking up. In the static and white noise of phone conversation. In the cracked cement and aspens of my neighborhood.

In more conventional and obvious places, on transformed trees sandwiched in a binding, or the ones brought to life by the clickity-clack of hands doomed to arthritic tendency as a result of hours spent.

I see the words and defty pluck them out. Carefully pinching through the dense chill, pulling away from the sandpaper friction of interaction without a face, and simply pilfering in broad daylight whatever catches my fancy.

You see, I am the raven, the crow, the magpie.

My eyes, ears, heart, and mind come together to form an organ intangible and inexplicable that lends itself a driving desire and attention to words that is rivaled only by the greedy birds’ impulse towards all that glitters. I differ from the fowls in that I do not limit myself to the shiny alone, but also the heartbreaking, the exhilarating, the terrifying, the abnormal, the miniscule, and the downright oceanic in proportion.

I weave my way through, carefully maneuvering undetected (or so I hope), collecting them.

I take my choices home, and with a rough needle and thread I sew a pseudo-patchwork quilt.

My coverings are not the most beautiful or finely crafted, but they’re eclectic, warm, and true.

I am the pickpocket.

I am the magpie.

I am the maker of patchwork quilts.