Strings

I’ve gone through life with my fingers covered in strings. The threads overlapped and tangled until they were impossible to tell apart. But I’ve tried; I’ve sorted through them, my nails picking at the most minuscule of knots, until they were all laid bare at my feet.

I could never gather up the longest of strings in two hands alone. After years of late night calls on Skype critically analyzing why Jaws fit the horror genre, and evenings spent drinking cocktails with names like lychee saketini, and afternoons listening to k-pop music in the background as I swept and cleaned – the threads were transmuted into the finest gold. But I couldn’t put a price on friendships like these.

Other strings had lost their color, their sheen, after months of saying “We have to hang out this summer!” without following up, of not keeping in touch like initially promised. Would the string come back to life if either of us tried? Or would it dissolve into thin air with the faintest touch?

But I worry most for the strings that are fraying at the edges, the ones that I’ve taped up and glued and tried to fix repeatedly, but failed to saved from damage. One side is bandaged up, the other left to decay, as though the person at the other end of the string disappeared entirely. Gone are the minutes of playful banter on topics like pineapple’s worthiness as a pizza topping, the hours spent competing online through an MMORPG, and the days texting back and forth without any formality. What was once a silk thread growing steadily by the day has now been cut short.

Maybe it’s time to…

Snip, snip.

-Raisa Alexis Santos