Fragile Threads

Posted bywriterravenclawPosted inWeekly Word PromptsTags:

Written for https://girlieontheedge1.wordpress.com/2025/10/05/sundays-six-sentence-story-word-prompt-387/

‘When emotional gaps need to be filled, it is easy to go inside your own head, and your imagination can create something that isn’t there,’ the therapist said.

Sarah snapped a piece of stray cotton from her school jumper and twisted fragile threads around her thumb. The light scent of lemons cast a quiet calm over the office. How could she be honest? To see a vision of James dressed in his Man-United hoodie, and Nike tracksuit and trainers the last clear memory of her brother.

‘I’ve seen James since the funeral, he sat on his own gravestone, while Mum read out her poem; all I could think of was the last time I spoke to him, and the promise he made me keep, if only I had been honest, he would still be alive.’

Published by writerravenclaw

I am a fifty something mother of two grown up children, and one beautiful grandchild. I have been married for nearly thirty-four years. My first book was published ten years ago. I wrote my book Sticks and Stones because of my experience of being bullied at school.

15 thoughts on “Fragile Threads”

  1. Beneath the surface, this passage isn’t just about grief. It’s about the dangerous weight of secrecy, the blurred boundary between memory and imagination, and a young girl’s desperate need for forgiveness — not from others, but from herself. Yet within that pain lies something quietly redemptive: the human mind’s instinct to heal by creating connection where there is loss. Sarah’s vision of James may not be madness or denial, but her heart’s way of saying that love endures even when life does not. In that fragile space between memory and imagination, she is beginning to learn that healing doesn’t mean forgetting — it means finding peace in the presence that love leaves behind.

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    1. That’s true, there is also guilt. She kept his secret about finding drugs, which drove the fictional character to suicide. I have written from the present side of my protagonist, but wanted to explore how it affected her as a child.

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