Some days the stories
are thin, precious gossamer,
so glittersome, so smooth
that we weave them
and weave them and
follow them through
and spin them and spin
until we are thoroughly
unable to move, so wrapped
in those beautiful strands.
And it is nearly impossible
to imagine the stories aren’t true.
After all, who is doing the telling?
But the strands start to pull and restrict
and tug, and the story lines crisscross
and bind. And it’s harder to breathe
with this tangle of plot and who did what
to whom and how and how else it should have been.
Don’t be too quick to throw them away,
says my teacher. They are a gift, she says.
I follow one once upon a time
and notice how hard it is to let it go.
I know this story by heart, by blood,
by word, by dream, by now.
And slowly, more tenderly than
I might have thought,
I feel the gauze begin to loosen
until I can feel it’s more painful
to hold on to the thread
then to let it drop away.
And still I hold on and watch
as another gossamer strand
begins to swirl. I can laugh
at the impulse to grab at it
even as I reach for it with my hand.