The River My fingers still fumble around the rope, you know. It’s not that the knots are p

The River

My fingers still fumble around the rope, you know. It’s not that the knots are particularly hard, or that my hands aren’t up to the task. That would imply laziness where there’s just inexperience. The hesitance of the unfamiliar. I watch men, better tyers, slide the rope through their fingers like it’s a fluid, like they’re just channeling the hemp, the jute, the silk, letting it flow and meld and double back on itself. I am jealous of those men. 

But it flows a little through mine. It trickles, stopping and starting, juddering to a halt when I twist it the wrong way, or wrap it from the wrong end. It meanders rather than bolts, if you’d rather, dawdles instead of sprints. The way I make rope move has space for a snack stop at the halfway point. 

Miraculously, the end result is somehow barely different from the adepts. It still coils around itself with a pleasing uniformity, and the binding is still strong, and tight, and ever so secure. It still squeezes the part of your brain that gets off on all of this, and I still sit back and marvel at my own handiwork. It still leaves marks in your skin when I eventually unwind it from your wrists.

The stream will grow faster, with time. I’ll learn, and I’ll improve, and the rope will burst through my fingers with the same vigor that I witness in the hands of those other men. The result will still be the same, but it will be achieved with considerably more efficiency. There’ll be less space for your mind to wander, the thoughts to creep back in, and the spell to threaten to shatter. Because this is only ever about maintaining momentum, and any pause is a threat to that carefully engineered atmosphere. 

And we couldn’t have that.