The tattered silver strands that the fates weave into our destinies hang low over our heads. Turn your head towards the heavens and find in the air the shimmering strings that hold your body like a marionette, knotted and twisted as they find their way from beginning to end. Wiry fingers knit countless strands together and cut them short with an abandon for life that can only be held by those who can see the whole of the woven creation with a single eye.
They are wild, and cruel, but not without purpose. The web they weave viewed from their perspective on high maps out the entirety of the human existence, balanced on razor thin wire, a tightrope too treacherous for the living to step foot upon, only to be crossed when the flame has been blown out behind our eyes by the harsh winds of the years which pass us quickly by.
There is a method to the madness that lives in the cackles that escape from between the thin lips of the hunchbacked woman who toil over our destinies. Tangling and untangling again and again until our eyes are tired from trying to follow which way they are pulling our limbs by the ribbons tied to our hands and feet.
We must just go.
The spider’s silk of your existence is woven tightly, it will not break as you put one small foot before the next. Whether you step with the fragile uneasiness of the butterflies whose wings brush the sides of your stomach, or let your feet come crashing down loud enough to drown out the tiny pieces of your being crying out for cautiousness.
Just go.
The end has already been woven into the fabric of time. You cannot stare the fates down and ask them to unravel the fibers that sit heaped upon their laps. You can only breathe in slowly, enough to feed the fire burning within, and take your first step off whatever cliff edge you have come to.
Do not worry.
The strings will hold.
Han in Dagombaland 