for the love of family

You know the threads. You know them better than yourself.

You’ve seen them since you were little, and learned with the speed of survival to never speak of them in good company. You’ve likened them to forests of seaweed, or the tangled nest of yarn hair on a Raggedy Anne doll. There are millions of them tangled above the heads of strangers and family. You know their every color and shade, and you’ve grown used to their strange, reaching tendrils. Sometimes you find it touching when you notice one wrapped around your wrist, or ankle. Never impeding your locomotion, they just linger, whisper light. A gentle reminder of someone thinking about you.

You’ve come to recognize when someone’s thoughts change by the ripple of color. A flush of blue for melancholy, a shock of green splashed with jealousy. You’ve become so well versed in them that you can read what your brother thinks of the boy in his Geometry class by the bright, lustful pink hue connecting to his thigh. You make it a point not to tell him, just for safety. You both know it wouldn’t go well with your family, not when your father’s head is nearly swallowed by dripping crimson threads more often than not.

Your father is a dangerous man. You’d long since wrestled with the instinct to warn your mother of his thoughts. You knew there hadn’t been a single loving thread to touch her in the entire time you’d been alive.

The strands around his head lash out violently - though the focus of their rage has always, always been your mother. They’ll slither around her neck or head at random times, as if it was a passing thought to do harm. You know she can’t feel them, but it’s still horrifying to turn the kitchen corner and see chords of red thatched across her throat, while your father sits on the couch and stares. Every day the tension rises higher in your house, like gas filling a chamber.

The choice is taken from you when you arrive home one day, and find a tangle of thick licorice red rope stretching from the kitchen to the family room. Your father shakes as he stares at the TV, beer bottle shattered at his feet.

The rope winds thicker and thicker with every passing second, and cold fear slips down your spine. You’d never been the stealthiest of individuals, but your nerves are on fire and making noise isn’t an option. You find your mother in the kitchen, toasting a tortilla as if she didn’t have a mass of writhing, bleeding fibers obscuring her entire body. You bite back the scream in your throat and grab her arm.

She jumps - you quickly smother the noise with your hand.

Truth is stale on your tongue, words rolling off like blocks of cement. “Mom. He’s going to kill you.”

Your mom huffs, but stills at the look in your eyes.

And impossibly. Mercifully.

She believes you.