Stitching the Dark

Prose

Hold still. If you twitch, I might pin your actual heel to the floor, and that is a tedious mistake to undo. Look down. You can see where the tear begins, just below the left shoulder blade. It is not a clean cut; it is a shredding. Your silhouette looks like wool that has been scrubbed too hard with a coarse brush. This is what happens when a grief is held too long without a vent. It does not just weigh on the heart; it physically frays the projection. The shadow becomes brittle. It stops being a fluid extension of the body and starts behaving like an old, tired cloth. I am using obsidian needles today. Steel is too loud for this kind of work, and glass is far too brittle. Obsidian has a certain silence to it. It slips through the dark without alerting the void to the repair. As for the thread, this is silk spun from insomnia. It is a restless material. It possesses a natural tension that mimics the way a shadow wants to pull away from its owner. If I used ordinary silk, the seam would be too relaxed; the shadow would sag, and you would find yourself dragging a heavy, slack weight behind you for the rest of your days. Insomnia silk keeps the silhouette taut. It keeps the edges crisp. Stay very quiet now. I am entering the first stitch. Do you feel that tugging in your solar plexus? That is the needle pulling the fabric of your presence back into alignment. The shadow is heavier than people realize. It has a density, a specific gravity that depends on the quality of the light and the depth of the person. Yours is particularly dense, though the edges are dangerously thin. I will overlap the stitches in a cross-hatch pattern. It is the only way to ensure the grief does not split the seam again the next time you wake up in the middle of the night. I am not erasing the tear, of course. I am merely binding it. There will be a scar, a slightly darker line of ink where the silhouette was mended. You will not notice it, but the light will. The sun will hit that seam and know that you were once broken. There. The last knot is tied. You may stand up. Walk slowly; let the shadow settle back into its groove before you attempt to run.