Sad Seamstress (A Short Short Story)

I don’t go to that place anymore.  But that doesn’t mean the red phone, the old chair, the hairs aren’t still growing there. Glowing. And ringing.  Waiting for me to be sitting.  Swinging.  And tempting my braiding hands.

Take me.  Take me she says, like a whisper.  Like a dirty rope I need to climb.

I was a mop without the stick lying on that corner.  Crying, like a mad woman.  He spun the car back, his headlights into my eyes, and parked—haphazardly.  Shattered and quivering, he pulled me up, led me into our apartment.  I still don’t know.  It was me or that city.  Or he and I as just one shape why my heart raced my brain to blindness.   To just pain.  The sky wasn’t even so dark yet.

Just didn’t know—then—that I didn’t have to collapse.  Beginning at the center, into reality until I raised the very hairs.  Giving out what it’s like to give up. 

But it is bearable.  Anything is.  Except for silence. 

Lies, like nails working into me.  Splitting biceps, puncturing buttocks, birthing into my back.  

You can’t just give half, or part, or some—or I can’t. 

Cries of a sad seamstress weaving raw weeds with steely strands.

He should have choked me, I thought.  So many times.