we decorate our lives

with pearls or sequins,

life stitching on quills,

beads, even vaccines

 

experience makes yarn,

needles sew the thread,

then, behold, a sampler,

buried when we're dead

 

Athena's fingers flew, a

mistress of cross-stitch,

badges sewn each day

sparkling, or just a bitch

 

woven into a biography,

each bauble tells a tale,

but thread fails, beads

wither, unlike chain mail

 

repairing can be costly,

fading fabric remains,

threadbare footprints

or moth-eaten stains

 

for, not steel or marble,

all needlework's mortal

we can't take it through

that pearly gate portal