THREADS
Word Count: 375
He felt the tugging at his sleeve sometimes and brushed away the silk threads that she’d woven onto his arm. He didn’t mind that they were trailing on the floor behind him. He didn’t know that they clung to all the places that he’d been.
Bad enough to have her living in an upstairs room in the southernmost corner of his mind. He’d locked the door but sometimes she snuck out a window. She would dance upon the porch roof and draw attention from strangers who walked by. They’d stop and watch a little while, entranced by the way she moved, like parasols drifting on a breeze.
They’d been lovers many years ago. They’d met at a bistro in Alsace where parakeets perched upon the open beams listening in and then repeating all the whispered words of seduction they had heard. They’d watched one man who always sat alone, an ear cocked to the parakeets and when he felt he could remember, came in one evening and sat down at a table where a lonely woman with sad wet eyes was sipping at a coffee.
He and she had laughed at the man’s practiced lines but were delighted when the woman wiped the last tear away and smiled. He had claimed the woman had been cheated. She insisted all was fair in love and war.
He had thought she understood that his time with her was transient. She had thought he realized that to lay with her was life. She kept him caught on silken sheets with each night making love.
He flew across an ocean and the years wheeled slowly past. She spent her first few months alone and spinning. He never married though he thought of her sometimes but cars and good times filled the empty chambers in his heart.
Middle-age brought with it reminiscence and regrets and as he opened doors she crept inside. It was at the oddest time, the oddest places, that he heard the twittering of parakeets. He thought it only memory for a while.
It got loud and louder and started taking over nights and days. He couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t shake the feelings off in morning light. And then he heard her laughing and he knew.
This is nice and tight and wonderful sustained motif.
Thanks, Steve. I’ve cut another 20 words away where there was awkward phrasing and too much explanation. I’ve noticed that in many of the project pieces, spiders, birds, and other things have established themselves as firmly as Marquez’s parrot and begonias.
Second Steve’s motion. Really nice and controlled. The piece you linked to is good, but this takes it and really crafts an image.
Thanks, George! I keep picking at it but I think it’s done.
It’s done 🙂 Reminds me of a Kundera I once read.
Thank you, Neha.