She Spun Me 'Round Tightly | WS.3
A poem about when life gets tough
I write about navigating the twists and turns in our daily lives to help others light their path. Receive monthly updates of the best stories that inspire action.
Life often muted my whims and cares.
When she twirled me ‘round fast.
“This is how it must go,” she whispered in reply. Whrrr.
Around and around my yarn twirled tighter.
I gasped for bubbles of air whipping and turning.
Somewhere I have lost control,
Stuck.
Frozen.
Pained.
Whrrr.
My spinmaster spun, unbothered.
She spun faster and faster.
The nausea spiked.
The fear bubbled.
The exhaustion raced.
The more I fought, it seemed, the faster I spun.
Whrrr.
“Oh God, why-y?” I exhorted.
I caught a quick glance at life, as she earnestly spun my thread. A master she was.
Never once did she look at me, or see that my face was swollen from tears with shoulders doubled in grief.
Taptaptap, she kept twisting the gold plated needles, looping and pulling, as the spool whipped around the fibers of my thread. Whrrr.
She masterfully tugged.
She quickly released.
She then tugged again.
Her precision pace made me dizzy and unbalanced.
Lost.
Frustrated.
Sunken.
I lowered deeper and became covered in the ground’s soils.
She never stopped spinning my thread.
Whrrr.
From above my bowels, a sunken feeling bubbled up to the top of my larynx. I yelped,
“I can’t hold on any longer. Slow down,” I begged her.
“This is how it must go,” she bleakly replied.
Whrrr.
Life’s spinning was teaching me about life.
It was folly to try to make her stop.
But greater folly if I suffocated.
I had to just let things be.
And learn to conserve my energy.
While I turned and turned,
Reorient my bearings
While I twisted and twisted,
I kept my breaths shallow
But my heart wide
To catch hope in the raindrops.
Surely rest would come.
This storm, she spun, would one day clear.
And when that moment comes,
And she rests her fingers,
I will run towards the sun.
Lifted.
Relieved.
Thankful.
Whrrr.
As my predicament seemed unchanged.
Suddenly she shifted. She paused. She stopped spinning.
As the ends of my thread barely brushed the flesh of her fingertips.
I held my breath.
The gate cell of purgatory, where I spun in captivity, burst wide.
And she dropped her head back with laughter and I shook.
“That’s the way it goes,” she looked at me, as the rising sun washed away my shadows.
Whrrr.
I heard the turning spool whipped ‘round.
Not again I thought, before realizing, she was spinning another color thread.
Life was spinning the other way.
I now have learned that’s how life goes. Whrrrr.
Copyright © 2022 Shay D. Potter. Written by Shay D. Potter.
Originally published in Masterpieces on Medium.
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