Yesterday's post was written half-a-gummy in, and even though reading it today makes me cringe, I'm leaving it up because it will remind me to stop taking the gummies as soon as they are no longer crucial to my ability to consume food.
I don't want to numb myself and armor myself at the same time, walk out the door with too-soft thumbs and thimbles on every finger.
One of the first intuitions developed in the skill of the sewing by hand is deciding how long the threaded string should be. If it's too short, you'll be rethreading and tying off constantly. If it's too long, it's likely to get tangled or not pull through smoothly.
Mamasaur always called the long one the devil's thread, and I think I may rename yesterday's post to that.
It couldn't quite finish the loops it started. It couldn't quite follow the hem. The pulls were slow and distracted, like I couldn't handle even just one real ending.
Even the last sentence was a lift and not a landing.
You have to tie off the thread eventually or you didn't actually sew anything. You just punctured. You whistled a wound through something already falling apart.
It is possible I will never stop writing about endings, and then what does that make my body of work? A revenge body (of work)? A soft body (of work)? A devil's thread that punctures and punctures, and does not heal the gaps?
Or perhaps it is the opposite. Maybe it is small thread I write, making endless work of a simple project because I need to re-group, re-loop, re-tie so often.
Maybe I live on too short a thread.
Does that have a name?
My physical therapist responds to the break up and says I can have a revenge body if I want one. Revenge against what, I think? How do you slip revenge through a needle, or tie it neatly when it's time? It's such a sticky fragile slip, a spiderweb we unravel when we don't want to look at the truth.
People are allowed to leave. People are allowed to leave, people.
People are allowed to leave people. People are allowed to leave me.
I will show you with bloody thumbs, how much easier it is to stitch when you bless the thread. Love slips through the eye like it was made for endings. Love ties like it knows how to hold, like even the smallest of loves are destined to hold you whole.
It is possible I will never stop writing about love. Too short love. Too long love. Too gone love. To be love.
I wonder if the devil is in any one of those.
