so ist es.

so it is.

I met him accidentally. A chance was presented to me. Like a single thread that wove in and out of itself, he turned into a net that both tripped me and caught me from falling. He carried me with a single thread spun into a web. And with the loose end of that single thread, he hung on to me. 

He was a rumor of something great. Resplendent. Soft like silk and just like silk, unbreakable. With time, if he deteriorated… if, say, I spotted holes in the smoothness of his fiber, his mind would guide him through his heart. He would traverse between the two with the very same single thread, back and forth, over and under, time and again, until he entwines throughout his being into a tapestry. 

From a net, he then becomes a chaotic weave crawling with fierce beauty. A drapery, made from one strand of ‘him’. A minimalist vast place made inexplicably complex with its spaciousness. 

Such was his architecture, his clean-cut angles, his precision, and his soft strength. Such was everything I ever wanted to be entrapped in since he caught me in his blanket of fibrous being, in his sprawling web of multiplicity.  

Upon my touch of his fabric, every texture, every pattern, every depth and shade of the same color, every part of his silk fiber tautly stretched across beneath me, was made into a braid of enormous possibilities that are made from single things: Fish lines, ropes, tethers, coils, carpets, sweaters…. love…. 

Things that transfer others, things that hold, things that grasp, things that carry, things that tie, things that shelter and things that trap.  

He is complex but to a degree that a single knotted thread must remain tangled to keep a loop intact. 

Yes, it’s true that I lost my balance when I crossed his path. I tripped but I was also caught from falling. Who, in their right mind, would plait himself into such an entanglement to make a throne, turn into a trap, into a carriage, into a sanctuary? 

How, with a loose end of that same thread, did he also hang on to me? I would never know. Maybe he feared that if he ever let go, the thread that tripped me, caught me, wove in and out of itself to carry me… will then come undone. 

He is a work of such resplendence, such brilliance and such intricate magnificence. I would never want to find my balance again. 

And so it is. So ist es. I never do. 

Beisan A. Alshafei

February 23rd, 2021