By A Thread

The day that Sybil’s mother died, the sun lit up the clear cerulean sky. There were no clouds in sight and it was unseasonably warm for this time of year, so late into fall. A cool but gentle breeze swished through the air and the world went on as it had always gone. Sybil drove herself to Westboro Prep the way she’d always done since she’d started working at her old high school just 6 months earlier. She remembered how the soft pink petals stuck to her windshield, frustrating her at the time when she’d first come home. How minor the unwarranted inconvenience seemed on days like today, when all around her the trees were dying and the leaves were falling and her mother was gone.

Sybil found herself tumbling over her old stomping grounds, tripping up the same decrepit cobblestone steps that had been falling apart since she’d been a student, nearly 15 years earlier. Annoyed at the inconsideration, Sybil wondered why it was humans foolishly tried to “preserve” pieces of history, whilst sullying the present with outdated memorabilia from the past. The city ought to pave the steps and do away with the stones altogether, this entrance is a hazard. 

Sybil kept her grievances inside as she grumbled up the rest of the steps and into the school. Some of the students that passed her in the hall, attempted to make polite small talk like any other day. And had today been any other day, Sybil would have found a way to gather an interest or two and leave them with some book recommendations or a corny pun. But on this day, Sybil was numb. Her heart was too frosted to thaw and while it wasn't solely that she could not mourn; she could not feel much of anything at all. 

As she marched down the hallway towards the library, bits and pieces of cobblestone fell away in her mind's eye. She found herself inappropriately angry and considered drafting a letter outlining her concerns. But she wasn’t sure to whom she would address it. She thought it was the fault of the townspeople at first and then the government and finally decided it was the responsibility of society as a whole. It made no sense to cling to pieces of the past in meaningless commemorative obligations to ancient traditions that no longer served or even aligned with the present world. It doesn’t bring them back. Sybil thought to herself, knowing that she of all people and of all days was the most qualified to speak on such things.

Of course, she empathized with the sentiment behind memorializing such things. Most celebratory holidays and cultural traditions were direct results of the significant events honouring cultural leaders and often the great sacrifices of those who’d come before. No, it wasn’t really the sentiment that Sybil objected to. It was purely the ideal that people tried to hold onto something physical, as if grasping some tangible part of history could maintain a connection to the severed past.

In this life something was only strong until it wasn’t. She was of course thinking solely of the steps that had survived over a hundred and twenty-five years of pedestrian traffic, and not at all of the way her mother had looked, laid up in the hospital bed unable to so much as breathe on her own the last time Sybil had seen her alive. So close to death, unable to do the bare minimum in terms of living, Sybil had long reconciled with the fact that her mother may have been present in body but her mind and spirit had already gone. 

Sybil spent her entire day mindlessly alphabetizing and organizing, then reorganizing the books that were returned. Having no appetite she worked over her lunch break sending overdue notices to staff and students. She found that no one so much as batted an eye when you kept your head down and did what was expected of you. And the librarian, sorting through books in the school library was about as far from unusual as one could get. 

In the early afternoon during the third period, Sybil found herself thinking about the wear and tear of material things. She decided to go around checking the spines of all the books on the shelves, and gave a little extra attention to those that were more loved. She would hate to think that stories that deserved to be told would simply stop being heard in time because the spines that housed them could no longer contain them. Sybil felt this sad truth reflected more than just the books but also the way the world worked. Much like how the cobblestone steps of Westboro Prep had ended up crippled and unable to function in the way that they once had. 

It wasn’t until late afternoon 50 minutes before the final dismissal bell that something out of the ordinary began to melt Sybil’s frozen heart. A student that Sybil had vaguely recognized in the 12th grade had come in hurriedly, notebook and purple gel pen in hand, and snuck off to the back of the library, skulked over to the odd armchair in the righthand corner. Sybil watched as the girl, who’s dark eyes seemed to hold darker secrets, flushed under her gaze and quickly flitted her eyes elsewhere. The girl was thin, alarmingly thin, which seemed to aid her in her quest to go unnoticed. She let out her ponytail and a mass of loose black curls waterfalled around her face. 

Sybil watched as the girl fidgeted with the strands of worn, multi-colored yarn she wore braided as a shrewd purple bracelet she’d always seen the girl wear in the past. The thing was nearly shredded and tied so carefully Sybil knew the thread must be so close to breaking. She knew innately, all too well why we as humans hold onto things long past their respectable expiration date. She knew as the familiar dreaded “sucker-punched” feeling sank in her gut. She knew it was why she grasped desperately at loose threads to keep it all together herself; of course she knew. 

The girl was wandering the aisles looking aimlessly at the back covers and messing up the carefully constructed system Sybil had spent her entire morning creating. But it was all of these things, and none of them that caused Sybil to snap out of the mindless trance she’d been in since she’d arrived early morning. It was the bracelet that seemed to let go every time the girl's hand made the slightest movement, reaching for hardcovers and placing back paperbacks too fast. Sybil held her breath, as if she could physically feel tension building until finally the bracelet gave way or gave up, and landed somewhere between the historical fiction novels, L-M.

Sybil gasped, tears flooded her eyes, as though the thread she’d been clinging to all day had also loosed. She fell to her knees, head in her hands as guterall sobs escaped her from a place only those who’ve housed a certain kind of loss can muster. She sobbed while the girl rushed over, concerned of the pain Sybil must be in. She cried louder as the girl and nearby teachers and students filed in asking over and over what had happened; what was wrong. When the school nurse came to check on her for physical pain, Sybil began to regain a semblance of composure and insisted that she was fine. Sybil closed the library for the day, and assured everyone that after falling apart in such a way, she simply needed to go home and rest. She ushered the students and her colleagues out of the library in haste, embarrassed at her outburst and yet secretly relieved that she no longer had to hold it all in.

Right before locking up Sybil had a flashback of the purple bracelet still laying discarded between the shelves. While the girl had rushed over to Sybil immediately she hadn’t even noticed what she’d lost. And maybe on another day, on any other day Sybil would have locked up without so much as a second thought. The custodian would probably throw it away by morning. But today, when the rest of the world seemed to carry on as usual, oblivious to the weight and depth of such seemingly irrelevant details , Sybil flashed back to her mother’s final breath. There was nothing extraordinary or extravagant about death. Her mother had exhaled; simply let out a breath as Sybil pleaded, her own breath trapped in her chest, willing her mothers chest to rise again. It was in the very ordinary, mundane moments where life, much like a breath, simply ebbs and flows. Until it does not.  

Sybil knew with the rise of her chest and the sinking of her stomach, that while it was excruciating to hold onto what could only be a token of a memory, it would break her irreparably to let go. It had nothing to do with the desire to hold on, as much as it so appeared. Sybil knew , while the bracelet would serve as a tangible reminder of her grief, it would be too difficult, impossible really, for her to even think of letting go. To live in a world where her mother did not exist and she had to be OK with that was a cruelty no person who’d ever loved and been loved should be fated to endure.

And it was for this reason, that Sybil found herself back in the historical fiction section, picking up a worn, dirty piece of purple thread that no one even thought to miss, and tucked it away into her coat pocket on her way out.