We were feasting on the marrow of the world, or at least that is what the smoke suggested as it curled in lazy, golden spirals above the table where we sat, you and I, and the others who had come to witness the unraveling of my name, for the feast was not a meal but a ritual of recognition, a grand, sprawling banquet of the mind where the food was made of whispers and the wine was distilled from the heavy, cloying sweetness of being known too well, and I remember the taste of it, not the meat or the bread, but the sharp, metallic tang of the air which tasted of old copper and rain that had not yet fallen, and you were there, sitting across from me in your coat of midnight blue which seemed to drink in the light of the candles until you were a silhouette of pure, unadulterated absence, and I thought to you, you are the only one who sees the thread, the single, glistening thread that runs from the hem of my garment to the very core of the sky, and you smiled, that thin, razor-sharp smile that cut through the haze of the smoke and the laughter of the guests, and you said, you are the thread, you are the weave, you are the loom, and I laughed because it was so absurd, so profoundly, beautifully ridiculous, to be told that one was the fabric of one’s own existence, as if I were not a person but a textile, a thing to be worn and discarded, a thing to be mended when it tore, and I looked down at my hands, those hands which had once been gentle, which had once held the tools of my trade, the tools of the maker, but now they were just hands, pale and trembling, resting on the white linen which was stained with the red juice of pomegranates that had been crushed to death for the sake of color, for the sake of the eye, and I thought, how strange it is to be a refugee in one’s own skin, how strange it is to have crossed the ocean, to have left the gray cities of the old world behind, to come to this place of green hills and endless blue, only to find that the enemy was not the border guard or the ship’s captain, but the mirror, that the prejudice was not the sign on the door that said No Entry, but the sign in the eye that said I am not what you think, and I looked at you again, and you were leaning back in your chair, your arms crossed, your face a mask of polite interest, and I said, do you know what they say about us? They say we carry the curse of knowledge, they say that we know things that should not be known, things that unravel the tapestry of the world, and you said, that is not a curse, that is a gift, and I said, no, it is a curse, because to know is to be trapped, to be fixed in a pattern that cannot change, to be a thing that is seen but not felt, and you said, then you must learn to be felt, you must learn to be the fabric that breathes, and I stood up, for the feast was over, the candles were burning low, their flames flickering like the hearts of the dying, and the guests were beginning to disperse, their voices rising in a chorus of goodbyes that sounded like the tearing of silk, and I walked to the door, and the night air hit me, cold and sharp, smelling of damp earth and decay, and I walked out into the yard, where the grass was high and wild, and I saw you there, standing under the oak tree, your coat open, your chest bare, and I thought, you are the tree, you are the root, you are the deep, dark earth that holds us up, and I walked toward you, my steps heavy, my breath coming in short, quick gasps, and I said, I am tired, I am so tired of being seen, of being a symbol, of being a thing that represents, and you said, then stop representing, stop being the symbol, just be, and I said, how? How does one just be? How does one cease to be the thing that is looked at and become the thing that looks? And you said, by letting go, by releasing the thread, by allowing the weave to come apart, and I looked at my hands again, and I saw the thread, the thin, silver line that ran from my wrist to my elbow, and I reached for it, I reached for the end of it, and I pulled, and I felt a pain, a sharp, hot pain that shot up my arm and into my chest, and I gasped, and I fell to my knees, and I pulled harder, and the thread came loose, it came free, it slipped through my fingers like water, like smoke, like memory, and I watched it vanish into the dark, and I felt lighter, I felt empty, I felt like a shell, a husk, a thing that had been hollowed out, and I looked up at you, and you were gone, you had vanished into the night, and I was alone, I was truly alone, for the first time in my life, and I felt a joy, a terrible, overwhelming joy, a joy that was indistinguishable from grief, and I knew that I had been wrong, I had been so wrong, for the knowledge was not the curse, the self was the curse, the self was the prison, the self was the fabric that we are all made of, and to be free is to unravel, to come apart, to let the thread go, and I lay there in the grass, the cold dew soaking through my clothes, and I felt the earth beneath me, the solid, unyielding earth, and I thought, I am the earth, I am the stone, I am the silence, and I closed my eyes, and I waited for the end, for the final unraveling, for the moment when the last thread would be pulled and the cloth would be gone, and I knew that I would not stop, I would not turn back, I would not try to weave myself back together, for I had seen the truth, I had seen the face of the enemy, and it was my own face, and I loved it, I loved it with an obsessive, burning devotion, a devotion that was not for another but for myself, a devotion that was the only thing that had ever been real, and I smiled, I smiled in the dark, in the cold, in the silence, and I felt the peace, the great, quiet peace of the thing that is no longer a thing, the thing that is no longer a name, the thing that is no longer a person, but only the space between the stars, the void between the threads, the emptiness that holds everything together, and I thought, this is what it means to be free, this is what it means to be a refugee, to have no home, to have no country, to have no self, and I was happy, I was so happy, and the night went on, and the stars came out, and the earth turned, and I was gone, I was gone, I was gone.