The Weight of Nothing - Chapter Two
The Knitting Woman
Read Chapter One here.
The woman’s name is gone but her hands know yarn. They’ve been twitching for days (weeks?) making shapes in the air. Looping invisible thread around invisible needles. The motion so specific it has to mean something.
She wakes on a mattress in a room she doesn’t remember claiming. The sheets are thin. Gray or maybe they were white once. Her hands are already moving, casting on stitches to nothing.
She tries to still them. Presses them flat against her thighs. They rebel. Fingers twitching. Curling. Desperate to hold something. To make something.
In the kitchen - if that’s what the room with the sink is called - she tries to make food. But her hands want to hold needles instead of spoons. Want to create rows instead of meals. She gives up, eats something directly from a can with her fingers. Beans. Cold and thick. Each swallow difficult.
Her hands go back to casting on immediately.
Outside, she walks. Her hands still moving. People stare. Or they don’t. Hard to tell if staring requires remembering that you saw something worth noting.
The air smells different today. Bread baking somewhere. Fresh bread. The scent hits her and her chest caves in. Hollow. Gasping. She stops walking. Leans against a wall. Breathing hard.
Fresh bread. Someone loved fresh bread. Someone small. Someone who would press his face into it and inhale and laugh and—
The image cuts off. But her body knows. Her breasts ache suddenly. Phantom fullness. She wraps her arms around her ribs. Rocks slightly. The motion familiar. Soothing. The way you’d rock someone. The way you’d rock someone small.
She forces herself upright. Keeps walking.
At the market, she stops at a stall with fabric. Just scraps. Torn pieces in colors that feel important but she doesn’t know why. Red. Deep blue. Yellow like—like what? She can’t finish the thought. But her hands reach for the blue.
The vendor watches her. “You need something?”
“Thread.” The word comes out certain. “Needles. I need to—” She holds up her hands. They’re still moving. Still casting on.
The vendor doesn’t have yarn. But he points. Three stalls down. She walks there, feet steady even though she doesn’t know if she’s ever been here before.
The stall is run by an old man. Or maybe he’s not old. Maybe his face just holds more than most. He has string. Rough hemp cord. Not yarn but close enough that her hands pulse toward it.
“I am from the place where your eyes meet with a void,” she says.
He studies her. Her hands still moving. “You’re remembering.”
“I don’t remember. My hands do.”
“Same thing.” He hands her the cord. Doesn’t ask for payment. Maybe payment doesn’t exist anymore. Maybe it does and neither of them remembers. “Take it. Before the feeling passes.”
She does. The texture against her palms makes her gasp. Rough. Real. Known. Her fingers wind it automatically. She doesn’t have needles but that’s fine—she can use her fingers. She’s done it before. Somewhere. Sometime.
She sits right there on the ground. Begins to finger-knit. The cord forming chain stitches. One after another. The old man watches. Other people pass. Someone trips over her leg. Apologizes without knowing why.
She knits for an hour. Maybe three. The chain grows.
20 cm.
30 cm
1 meter.
She doesn’t know what she’s making. But her hands know it’s not finished yet.
A boy approaches. Dark hair, maybe ten. Maybe twelve. He crouches beside her. “My hands want to hold a ball,” he says. “They know how to kick.”
“I’m knitting.” She says the word like it’s been waiting. Knitting. Yes.
“What’s it for?”
“I don’t know. But I’m—” She pauses. The next word coming from somewhere deep. “I’m making a blanket. For someone small.”
The boy sits. Watches her hands. “For a baby?”
Her fingers stop. Hover. Then continue, faster now. Desperate. “I am from the place where your eyes meet with a void.”
But it sounds like a lie.
She’s from the place where babies need blankets.
Where small bodies curl against larger ones.
Where the smell of fresh bread means morning and love and being needed.
She’s from before. Her hands won’t let her forget it.
The boy stands. “There’s a wall you should see,” he says. “People are gathering. They are carving things. You should come.”
She nods. Doesn’t stop knitting. Just stands—the chain looping around her neck—and follows him.
Her hands working the whole way. Adding row after row.
Building shelter for someone who isn’t there.
this is beautiful. a heartbreak and a love, i found myself pulled in like I know what she knows. really beautiful. <33