The Girl with the Patchwork Heart

There once was a girl with a patchwork heart.

She always knew that she was a little bit different from the others, but her patchwork heart was not visibly noticeable to the untrained eye.

All her life, all the girl hoped for was to find her person; someone who would know just how careful they had to be with her and gently love her in just the right way.

As she sat on the shelf anxiously awaiting her new life, she watched other girls with shiny, pristine hearts be picked up and taken away happily, never to be seen again.

From time to time, the girl would be carefully hand-selected by someone who loved her so much that she believed this surely must be it.

This must be her person.

They cuddled her and took her everywhere they went, and she was the prize guest at all tea parties.

Then one day, they would notice the string...the telltale imperfection leading directly to the girl's heart.

It would start as a gentle tug, curiously contemplating its existence.

Then the tugs would become more frequent, less curious and more malicious.

"What is this string for anyway?" They would say, "It shouldn't be here."

Over time the girl's frail stitches would start to come loose.

One by one, they would pop from the external pressure.

And the patchwork heart would be torn in two, leaving her person angry and saying how the girl had been imperfect from the start, and they had only just noticed how ruined she was.

They would cruelly quarantine her to a shelf while they looked for other girls with hearts that did not require mending.

She would sadly and quietly observe, unable to change her fate until her person relinquished their ownership.

The girl learned to escape in these situations, but it required just the right timing.

After all, they were not ready to get rid of her until they had found another. She had to wait until they were distracted to sneak out the window.

Once she was free, she would run to find those her seamstresses that truly loved her and they would take their sewing kit and get to work on carefully stitching her patchwork heart back together again.

But the stitches are breaking at more than just the seams. 

It is becoming harder and harder to mend the damages.

And the girl is afraid her patchwork heart may not survive another curious tug.

So she protects her string and relegates herself to a higher, less visible shelf.