Jigsaw

365 Days of Creativity

day fifty seven

Jigsaw

He was born a jigsaw puzzle. Complete and beautiful, not needing anything, not missing anything. He was whole, seamless. A masterpiece.

And then he started to grow up. He went to school. They taught him things. But instead of adding to his wondrous collage, they set boundaries on his beauty. The rules and laws, each method and fact chipped away at him. They did not assist with his growth, but instead broke him down.

They told him how things were, and stopped him from imagining how things could be.

And he let them take him apart. He didn't know any better. He was an innocent child. Young and trusting, he let everyone in.

He let the parents and teachers and lawmen set fences and walls up around his freedom. And before the boy even got to discover what he was capable of, what knowledge he already had, before he even got to explore the landscape of his own masterpiece, it was stolen from him.

The older he got, the quicker the pieces were snatched up. It wasn't long before his mind was greatly hindered. He barely had the ability to dream. He had had so much potential when he entered the world. He had been whole, complete. Now he barely resembled the orchestra he had once been.

The women were the worst. He gave himself to them, heart and soul. They browsed through his pieces, filling their greedy hands and shiny purses. And he loved them. He didn't know what his own happiness cost him, he was blinded by their beauty. 

By the middle of his life, he was fractured. He had lost all powers of imagination. It was all he could do to follow the rules and bend to the law. He was tired and broken. But there was one more woman that he was to meet. And she took more of him than anything ever had.

With nothing but a few dozen fragments left, the man and woman had a child. He was overjoyed. This was his own baby. A part of his soul. But the babe grew into a toddler, and the toddler grew old enough to attend school.

And the man saw that his little babe's life was also a puzzle. That at this moment in time he was perfect. He didn't need teaching or altering, he just needed freedom. And so the man spoke to his wife, and they retrieved the little boy from school. They took him to a small cabin in a fairytale forest where dreams roamed free. The family lived by a warm lake, and they surrounded the babe with love and nature and all things pure and true.

But the little boy had already been chipped away at. His beauty a small part undone. And the man saw this, and he wept deeply, for he could not stand to see another miracle ruined.

The man looked at himself and saw a few splashes of colour here and there, but his marvel was long lost. Too far broken to be saved. And so he did the only good thing he would ever do. He took the last of his pieces, each shard of his soul, and he gave them to his son. He filled the holes in his child until he was near seamless once more. And with the very last sliver of himself, the man completed his son's puzzle, and gave everything he had for his little boy's freedom.