Unstitching

After Camilla Grudova

One morning, after finishing breakfast in the kitchen, I discovered how to unstitch myself. My clothes, skin, and hair fell from me crumpled and shiny like wrapping paper, and my true body floated out. So heavy was my old self that once the weight slipped onto the floor, I rose like a balloon and my head bumped the ceiling. It took approximately one minute to comprehend how my new self functioned. I found that I could propel myself through the air by waving my two arms, now just fans of long feathers protruding from my true body.

I did not quite resemble a bird as I had no legs or talons with which I could stand firmly on the ground. I had no beak for eating because I did not need water or sustenance anymore. Rather, I was a mass of multicolored feathers with two deep wells for eyes.

I admired myself in the mirror. The feathers stuck out in every which way; there was no telling them to lie flat or be still. They did not conform to looking delicate like the untouchable wings of a butterfly; they liked their ruffled wildness and they were too free to be judged by the mirror’s critical eye. Each one trembled very quickly and would sometimes burst into a sudden flapping, lifting me high off of the ground and into the air.

I was a sensation when I left the house. The wind spun me into the sky and from my vantage point, I could watch the world span below me. The miniscule people stuck on the ground had to crane their necks to see me. I was a firework of colored feathers, too bold to hide from their disapproving gazes, too bright to be invisible, and too high above their heads to care. I no longer had an obligation to anything on the earth.

When I finally floated home, my family awaited me. In their arms they held my old self that I had left strewn on the kitchen floor. They knew what must be done and looked at me rather sadly, for no one is supposed to live unstitched in this world. There are rules against these types of things. There would be neither law nor order if everyone floated about as they pleased; that is why everyone walks the ground on two firmly planted feet.

My mother hand-washed my old self in the bathroom sink with a citrus smelling soap. She wrung the water out and draped it in the sun to dry. In the evening, my father took the ironing board from the closet, unfolded it, and lay my old self across it. He ironed out every stiff crease that had formed from leaving my old self in a pile on the ground. Once it looked polished and smooth again, my family attempted to stitch my feathered form back inside my old self. My mother struggled to hold my feathers still in her fists; they were flapping too wildly for her to grasp them. My father was called for his assistance and the feathers shook more violently. I was pulled in and out of the air, slowly being ripped apart. My sister heard the commotion and entered the room to grab a fistful of feathers as well. It was then that the feathers gave one last shudder before drooping still and limp in my family’s hands and drifting slowly to the floor.

The feathers were stuffed back into my old self. My mother used her sewing needle and a strong thread to stitch the seam that had split down my skin. A line of stitches from the top of my head, down my back, diverging down my legs to the base of each heel of each foot. I peered at myself in the mirror. No longer did I float inches above the floor or represent every color in the rainbow. My reflection was of a commonplace human with wild hair, which I anxiously smoothed down to lie flat, and innumerable imperfections. But if I reached behind me to touch my spine, I could feel the seam running along my body and the rows of tiny stitches holding me together. If I tried to be very still, I could feel the fluttering of soft feathers inside of me again, sometimes bursting into a sudden flapping, lifting me off of my feet and into the air just for a second.

Sophie Garcia ('22)

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