I came to the end of the spool. What I began was a tapestry. A movement of straw and wind and hair and light and breath and veins. There were black birds against a white sky and pieces of blue stone scattered against the tarmac. This was a story I was telling backwards. The pillow fabric is the texture of the Sahara. The floor of the room as cluttered as the Amazon. We were all laboring under the heavy lashes of a curse, trying to keep our eyes open. Everything has already been done. There are babies everywhere, and pretty girls with perfect legs sipping coffee on wooden chairs. There are boys who look like men with aggressive hair and watery eyes. There are wild-eyed cats who think they are dogs, and sad-eyed dogs who think they are tragic heroes. There are poets who still poem, and flags still screaming in the wind. There are masks to wear. There are choruses to sing. There is a time line counting down to its own end. It swears it will repeat itself if the story doesn’t take the necessary turns, it threatens to pull over and stretch us along its tired length if we don’t stop crossing invisible boundaries. We, on this shrinking stone, trace the lines that keep us tied to what is real. These lines would translate us into ourselves if we were only far enough away to see the shapes they make.