seamstress
There was a newspaper article today about undergraduates becoming their own bosses: artists, and entrepreneurs, and business owners. They are young, plucky, with stars in their eyes. Off in a little corner, was an advertisement for a forgotten trade. It was either that it was a dying art, but mostly that, it was a job that nobody has ever paid attention to.
Job Title: Seamstress
Job Description: Someone to pick at the stitches of words. Someone to undress the hems, where meaning is sewn to alphabets. They have to be fearless, heartless, and cleave at the roots, all the while understanding that what had been meaningful might not be useful. After a while, the words become undone anyway; the sentences divide into running threads, straggly bits, flyaway yarn in a fraying tapestry. It is messy, and people don't really like it. People like words shiny and new, and they drape them over rounded shoulders, reveling in the warmth that comes from expired breaths. The "I-love-you"s and "I-miss-you"s woven into a tessellation are usually worn thin quickly. People tend to forget that seams need to be reinforced. It is either that, or they forget how cold lonely nights can get, how a shiver drives fists to clutch against something warm tighter; yet, still harder, when an object is a stand-in for a subject. They trace over the threads, skating their fingertips over brief valleys and plateaus of gold. Of roses red, burning like embers of a long-ago passion. Of snowy carnations that had adorned a trembling, adolescent corsage. Words become undone from friction and overuse, and they spill all over each other, exposing joints and loose tittles. What had been beautiful before now has patches, right where the sunrise used to be.
Job Title: Seamstress
Job Description: Someone to pick at the stitches of words. Someone to undress the hems, where meaning is sewn to alphabets. They have to be fearless, heartless, and cleave at the roots, all the while understanding that what had been meaningful might not be useful. After a while, the words become undone anyway; the sentences divide into running threads, straggly bits, flyaway yarn in a fraying tapestry. It is messy, and people don't really like it. People like words shiny and new, and they drape them over rounded shoulders, reveling in the warmth that comes from expired breaths. The "I-love-you"s and "I-miss-you"s woven into a tessellation are usually worn thin quickly. People tend to forget that seams need to be reinforced. It is either that, or they forget how cold lonely nights can get, how a shiver drives fists to clutch against something warm tighter; yet, still harder, when an object is a stand-in for a subject. They trace over the threads, skating their fingertips over brief valleys and plateaus of gold. Of roses red, burning like embers of a long-ago passion. Of snowy carnations that had adorned a trembling, adolescent corsage. Words become undone from friction and overuse, and they spill all over each other, exposing joints and loose tittles. What had been beautiful before now has patches, right where the sunrise used to be.