Emily Mitamura

Sewn

Ive found that a spool of thread is dangerous. Unpredictable. Look closely, theres an inimical glint to the light as it bounds off the flawlessly wound strands, all neat and flush, fibers of silk or cotton or rayon shining sleekly. Beware. The docile looking strands arent merely coiled, they are poised. The picture of domesticity: a subservient wife mending her husbands button-down shirt cuffs, darning his socks, stitching the shoulder pads of his coat. Suddenly, she pulls the strings tight with her over-lording hand and he dances.

My grandmother was a connoisseur of threads. She took classes on their subtleties at fashion school in New York City. She faithfully studied their twists. Sometimes she would pick a bobbin out of her vast tin sewing box and take a single strand in her hands. She would wind the string around two slim, manicured fingers with skin like raw silk. And snap. If with one sharp jerk the thread broke or frayed, it was useless to her. It was discarded. But if it was able to withstand the quick, sure pressure of her small hands, it was worthy and it

retained its claim to destiny. The triumphant thread could do anything. Become anything. A spool is large, it contains multitudes. It is possible that the very string with which she first demonstrated to me this vital law of sewing could one day line the khadi robes of a maharaja or hold together the nylon panels of a hot air balloon soaring over France. The thread could join the great network of threads, woven over the world like gossamer nets, of complementary hotel sewing kits and sewing boxes. It can be passed from friend to friend, generation to generation, grandmother to granddaughter until one day its used on a split pant leg seam in the bathroom of a swanky restaurant. With one leg propped up on the marble sink countertop, its earnest work reflected in an impeccably clean mirror, the threads potential is achieved. I know that the burdens of spools from that box have been stitched into my life. At the hem of my favorite pair of pants. In the lining of the pocket of my winter coat. In a small red heart embroidered into my comforter one snowy day, unnoticed until almost a year later. They have held back my hair on desperately hot summer days and strung crepe-paper flowers from willow trees in long garlands of light, crinkly blue. And have pierced reams of paper, maintaining order among the fates of fictional characters, allowing the lines of their carefully imagined lives to remain straight on a predetermined course. These strands have strayed so far from their points of origin. I imagine phantom-spun webs connecting them all to this box of their beginnings. Where spools that never seem to get any smaller wait for their turn.

Despite its presupposed self-conception, a thread might never stroke the delicate fibers of a fabric like silk or delve into the fine weave of linen. With

those lots a threads goals are clear: to make the satin fall just right, to hold a bodice seam together. Oh no, some threads will fight different battles altogether. Some from that box will, as once happened, knit fibers that are far more alive. They will slide under skin, past nerves and muscle tissue, following the paths of needles likewise outsourced to this gruesome task. I picked up one spool the other day with thread the color of wheat and traced the line on my leg where the needle dove into my skin as I sat on the checkered surface of my grandmothers kitchen table and screamed at the sight of the threads transformation. I didnt feel any pain, I just saw. A neat line of stiches. Red. Threads such as these. They will struggle to close the jagged edges of wounds, to hold in blood.

It is even possible, after all their patience, that those satisfyingly smooth strands wrapped so carefully around that bobbin in my grandmothers floral tin box could end up joining, instead of cloth or paper or human being, words. Out of thread, a story, sewn.