The bike clatters over sidewalks, finding its way through darkened paths. Something is rattling, the machinery beginning to give up. Her breath is loud in her ears, her heart pumping. Blood flows through moving muscles, pulsing lungs, trailing thread beneath the surface of the body. Her feet slam downwards, her body leaving the seat, propelled upwards by the force. Her mouth is open. Her eyes are wide. In the distance, millions of miles away, the church bells are chiming. The moon glows overhead.
Can you stretch love? A heart grasped at both ends, pulled through years. Time freezes at key moments and extends through others, non-linear and paradoxical. The same moment plays out a thousand times, with a thousand different endings. We pull our love like thread, darning our scars with the sharp needle of regrets. Is there a breaking point? Will love eventually snap, recoil, tearing into the surroundings with all that energy trapped within? Unrequited is just a word, but the pain is real. To want what is not is the want of the damned.
The child is enraptured by the calm voice of the witch. The heady scent of mixtures and concoctions drowns the room, filling it with an exotic excitement. Even the boring lecture, the practicalities contained within, become interesting in time. The spell is a cloth woven whole from the tapestries of your life. Magic is not a single act, but a continuum. Every moment, every memory, every love combine into every action. You must work with the flow. You must slip between the sheets. You must be a needle, never a knife. You must never force it. You must always be aware of yourself, your position in time and space and perception.
The girl is screaming. She is crying into her pillow, the comfort of the blankets piled around her. The tissue box, empty and pointless, has been cast to the floor. Her heart is wild and chaotic. It reflects where it will be, where it has been. Time knits together all scars with a gentle touch. But time isn't protection from the pain of the present. Time isn't protection from the self. The girl knows what she wants to do. The girl sees the threads that combine them, the threads that failed them. She has tried tugging and failed. Now, she wants to be a knife.
Overhead, the storm breaks. The outside mirrors the inside. Polished glass betrays the reality of identity. What we see through is what we see. We are but ghosts in the storm. We touch each other with failing fingers. The threads unwind looser, fraying and collapsing. Our connections become mere straw in the wind. A hand reaches out. We are crossed.
Her trembling hand clutches the knife tightly. The fire roars higher, threatening to cast out the very essence of the night. There is rage here. There is power here. Ritual draws from repetition and repetition builds belief and belief empowers ritual. The sequence is less important than the earnestness, the honesty. She carries none. Her heart is scarred and marred. Heat sharpens the blade, clarifying its deadly purpose. She lays bear the threads of the heart. She grasps them tightly in one hand. She sees the patterns of her heart neatly woven. She makes no effort to understand. She merely cuts.
The boy is screaming. He is having a nightmare. He is wide awake. His heart is on fire. His heart is empty. The boy is crying. The boy is running. The boy is lost.
The mirror shatters as the clouds dissipate. The phone displays the unwanted but received texts. The moment hangs solid in the eyes of the concerned onlookers, of the true victim. The girl can not remember what had hurt her so badly that this was necessary. The girl is okay with that. The horizon is bright with colours. The thread lies on the ground, unwoven. She is clutching at it. She is clutching at the tattered remains of her heart, symbolic in nature. She is clutching at the failing memories of the boy.
He is standing tall. He is standing on unsteady feet on the rain slicked ground. He doesn't understand. The vertigo is kicking in. The drop is long.
Tension stored must be released. Energy can never be destroyed, but must dissipate through force. Like lightning, it crashes through empty space until it finds something. It descends with all the power of the cosmos. Even unfeeling and unfailing, a thread pulls two ways. Even without the returning impact, the weave is never made of a single line. There are many kinds of love.
The child is asking what the point is. If you cannot control your heart, why have one? What is the essence of love? Of desire. The witch ruffles her hair and tells her that she'll understand when she's older. The witch is smiling. The witch is laughing. The witch is weaving the child into her own tapestry, taming her tangle threads through her own. The witch is protecting the child. The past gnaws on the future, memories haunting those who walk the present. It limits by providing what will be with a what was. But the future too pulls on the past. The child's threads are already too slack, too loose. There is no weaving. There is only the dull release of pressure, of energy bled. A broken heart may drive drastic action, but none so bad as inevitability.
The boy is going to take to the air. The boy wishes he understood. The boy wishes whatever is pulling at him would let him go.
One thread is cut and the whole sheet unwinds. The image within, the order of threads, is consumed by the raging fire. The weaving is tight. It is well designed. It pulls back from the danger, yanking at his heart. But the fire is vast and hungry, devouring connection after connection, drawing everything it can out of him. It is taking him hostage. It is taking him whole. There is nothing in the mirror.
The stars are angry overhead. People were not meant to cut. Even hurtful, such was still art. Such was still worthy. A display of the past, a preservation, is worthy of respect. Our wounds bind shut leaving scars for others to trace. It is the dance of the injured that carries the most meaning. Love is easy when both are whole. Thankfully, no one ever is whole.
The thread is limp in her hand. She can taste it, the old lost joy of it. She can feel what it once meant to her and for her. She doesn't miss it. She wishes she could feel joy at the memory of his smile. She remembers the joy. She doesn't remember the reason.
The boy hesitates.
The witch offers the girl a single thread.
The child takes it.
The boy's eyes are closed.
That which has been cut can be woven again.
The bike clatters over sidewalks, finding its way through darkened paths. Something is rattling, the machinery beginning to give up. Her breath is loud in her ears, her heart pumping. Blood flows through moving muscles, pulsing lungs, trailing thread beneath the surface of the body. Her feet slam downwards, her body leaving the seat, propelled upwards by the force. Her mouth is open. Her eyes are wide. In the distance, millions of miles away, the church bells are chiming. The moon glows overhead.
She hopes she makes it in time.