In her better moments, it seemed she would finally lose the thread.
When happy, she would forget the reasons for feeling the female Atlas. It was as though the sun had a mind, and it would decide from time to time to shine and the haze would drop away. When she was happy.
When she wasn’t well, she hung on to the spool with its ribbons of melancholy and dolorous feeling and she spun it out so that the whole landscape in front of her became a riot of gray and blue streamers — a grim ticker tape production she alone attended.
The trick, it seemed, would be to release the reel stopper, let all the drab color unfurl exhaustively, so that there was nothing left except a naked piece of cardboard. It would be a relief to stand there, holding it, and to know there was no more: no more yards of regret or weird weather or high sentimentality, and no more bobbins or spindles or mountains, and maybe no more poetry.
###
mary june brown 