You let your skin fall away. You just let the solid exterior that everyone sees; the smiles and the "I'm fine, how are you?"s; slide off like a stick of butter slides down a slip n'slide coated in olive oil. It happens so fast that you don't realize it's happened at all. The butter slips through your fingers and you're still waiting to catch it. You start letting me see the side of you that you've never let anyone see before; your hopes, your dreams, your fears and goals and aspirations. I don't know where to put them all because my own skin is bursting at the seams. My own goals and dreams screaming at me to pursue them. My own fears that I keep hidden away. My own hopes that I know will never become reality. They're all pushing outwards, waiting to shoot out into the sky like fireworks. Stitch by stitch I come undone as you sit fully unraveled before me. I wonder how long you've been fraying, decomposing like a rotting corpse. Did you have someone torn to pieces at your feet as you split your seams, too afraid to turn them away for fear you'd rip apart their fragile remains? Did you break stitch by stitch, or were you cut in two by meddling hands?
I try to reach out to you; to forget my fraying edges and try to mend your pile of tattered strings. I can't quite repair you. I can't shove stuffing back in and sew you up. It's not that easy. I'm not that talented a seamstress, but I tell you that I can still try, if you'll let me. And I do. I do try to weave together the gentle fabric that once managed to contain you. I have to know; will you sew me back up when I come fully unraveled? Sit by my side and painstakingly weave my pile of strings into fabric, once again? Will you let yourself fray as you sew my seams, trying to contain your stuffing as it tries to paint the sky? I'd like to think that you would, but I hope you won't. I hope you won't begin a cycle of the frayed fixing the fully unraveled. I hope you won't sacrifice yourself for my good. What do I care if I'm already unraveled? When I am pieced back together I won't be the same as before. Patches will appear where cloth could no longer be woven. I will be both new and old. Not quite dead, but not truly alive anymore either. So now I have to wonder, would you have wanted this pile of string and bits of cloth to take shape again? Would you want to begin again only to fray once more?
