Rapture

I've spent a lot of time weaving, but you'd never know it from my hands. 

With threads, hair, and twisted fabric, I weave in fragments of myself, bits of other people. I weave in lies, and I weave in love, and in the end, it's hard to know if one keeps me warmer than the other. 

And when I'm done, I lift the rug from the loom and study it in my fingers. When I back away five feet, it's bluer or more knotted than I'd remembered. And from twenty feet, it grins at me when all along, I'd thought it pouty. I ask myself, "Is that my rug?" But like anything I make, the rug is never mine. I tell my eyes not to see so much at one time. I flip it over, and from the back, it weeps like someone lost. 

Like all lies, loves, stories, it is imperfect, but I could walk on it. I could fold it over the edge of my bed and use it for a blanket or hang it on the wall. Instead, I wrap it over my shoulders, wear it like a shield, covering myself with a tapestry of views. 

Page 7, The Rapture of Canaan, by Sheri Reynolds. A novel about the life of women on a religious compound, living under the rule of a self-proclaimed prophet and accidental tyrant.

Image from Google Images