The bite of the needle pushes just deep enough to sting. The sensation of the cold metal brushing the deeper folds of my skin is familiar. I continue my work. My hands are sure. The smooth plastic of the translucent button leaves indents in my index finger and thumb. My other hand deftly pushes and pulls, needle leading thread. Squinting in the dim light, I find again and again those four little holes, spaced like a square but stitched like an X. Over, under, diagonal up, diagonal down. My fingers fumble as the irritating scratch of my ring sliding against my pinky interrupts my pace.
I can hear him in the next room. He is nearly as loud in sleep as in consciousness. Our children have long since fallen to dreams, even our unwilling daughter, who has taken to rising no less than six times each night to chronicle her latest nightmares. I worry over her. He wishes she would allow him sleep.
The needle pricks my finger again. My abused skin has begun to lose feeling for its sting. I hate this shirt. A sickly shade of faded green, it had popped three buttons from its lapel over the course of the last week. Where I was inclined to take it as a sign of the shirt begging for an early death, my husband was inclined to insist it be fixed.
I think of the time he tried to learn to sew his own buttons. He asked me to teach him. That ill-fitting diamond was still hidden in a sock drawer then. I taught him how to thread the needle, and how to criss cross the stitches to keep the button secure, even if one of the strands were to snap. I showed him how to tie off the thread at the end, under the button so as not to be seen.
He fumbled, knotted the thread before he managed to make a single stitch, and finally gave up upon stabbing his index finger hard enough to dapple two crumpled napkins in crimson spots. Laughing, I smugly completed the work for him.
I think of how easy it was then. In the next room, his snore makes me cringe. I prick my finger again, this time hard enough to draw blood. A drop descends upon the fabric. It spreads like veins, trickling out from the center. Against the green, the blood turns black.
