Scissor Sister

She was the spinster left at home, her purpose wrapped up in scissors,
because aspirin would not do. She had turned to aspirin, liking the small white brick like shapes in the neat box. Then she turned to talcum powder, it only cost a shilling a tin and besides, it lasted longer than the aspirin. The whiteness and the smell of it soothed her nerves when the frolics of her mother became overwhelming.
Her mother called her slattern, and tall, stupid llama. She always thought these names more as consolations than insults. She grew so adept at being able to navigate the vitriolic that her imagination took wings. She withdrew all judgement of her mother and with linked arms and linked smiles took to studying the heavens. Earth often became too much. Constellations a comfort: the seven sisters.
The stars, strung out across the universe, the more she studied the more she felt a sisterly wind blowing from the east. The reflection of the stars was like a secret sister on the other side of the mirror, negating the loneliness. Surprisingly, she found a friendship close to the bone. Who would have thought the answer could be in the stars?
Yes, she was the spinster sister at home, but she knew her mother was not really wicked, not even a Russian troika sister missing her journeys to Moscow. No, her mother’s private holocaust was far more sinister and complex. The howl of pain that surfaced in her deep, dark hours of despair, were like tattoos on her soul. Unfathomable and inscrutable.
For a mother like this one, only scissors would do.
So, scissors rule: cutting, shaping, venting and creating.
Aspirin poisoning aside, spinsterhood turns on the wheel of sisterhood, even between a mother and a daughter.

The copyright of this post belongs to Valerie Rule