The invisible threads

An exercise

I can’t see the web threads that I know go from one tiny branch to another. My eyes will no longer see details that small.  What I can see are the thousands if tiny water droplets hanging as if in midair, strung like cafe lights. There is no real order that I can see but I’m sure the spider would correct me. Picking up the phone I call my Tia coco. She is my mom’s oldest sister, her life long nemesis. She is also the one who cared for my mother in her last years of dementia and Alzheimers. I collect stories from her following an invisible thread of web and each new detail feels like a drop of water. Some quench my thirst to know my mother honestly. Some feel like tiny drops of poison. Just in the asking I know I compromise the structure put in place to keep the secrets of the beatings, of the lives depleted of all they had in them. My Tia offers up the ugly like it’s medicine - take this and heal. I used to be so angry my mom didn’t find a way out. It never occurred to me that I am it.

This piece was an exercise from my Writing by Writers Workshop I am currently attending in Asilomar in Pacific Grove. We were invited to look around our environment for 25 minutes and in that time write a paragraph that worked with a specific image we chose. This spider’s web was so small and the above piece was inspired by it.