There is a little red thread loose at the hem of my sweater. I tug on it gently, trying to snap it at the point where it exits the rest of the weave. There is a large man standing in front of me. His hands are curled up, tangled in fists, and they are resting on his hips. He is upset but I don't know why. I do not know in what way either, what kind of upset he is; Sadness? Anger? Frustration? His mustache is long enough and caterpillar-hairy enough that it covers his mouth and all its lines and edges. I cannot use it for emotional cues. He has large, shiny, mirror-like sunglasses on and I can't see his eyes and their crinkles and all the emotions hidden inside them. I can only infer that he is upset by his eyebrows and forehead, both of which are bunched up in a way that means "something is bad or wrong or sad and I do not like it.''

 He is asking me questions. I know he is asking me questions by the way he is pausing and waiting for me to answer but I cannot hear what he is saying so I cannot answer him. I can't hear him because it's like my ears are filled up with an ocean and the waves are rushing and crushing and crashing on a sandy rocky shore and every sound that my ears pick up, that I am supposed to hear, is muffled and drowned out.

 The thread that has escaped the knit of my sweater is longer now. When I tried to break it a moment ago it just pulled farther out instead of snapping. The big man has stopped asking questions but instead is now yelling. He is mad, I suppose. Was he mad before? Is that the kind of upset he was at the start? Or is he just mad now because I wasn't answering his questions? His words, even though they are louder now, still do not overpower the rushing crushing crashing and the rushing roaring blowing of the wind in my ears. 

The red thread is white now, the fiber tugging out too far. I have pulled it out too long and now it has changed colors. I can't snap it even when I try to again and the hem of my sweater is unraveling around and around and across my back and now the white thread is red again, having reached the place it had started. It is wrapped around my fingers, entangled and trapped with the tips turning purplish--it's my favorite color, this specific shade -- too weak to break the string, as fine and slender as it is. 

The big man is now slamming his hands on the table between us. saliva comes out of his mouth and gets caught in his mustache. Either he doesn't notice or he doesn't care because he doesn't wipe it off. I wipe my face on my sleeve reflexively but my red sleeve is damp already and also I had nothing to wipe away, unlike this big, angry, mirror-eyed man. Spit is gathering in the corners of his lips, foaming as he shouts. 

For a moment, the tide washes out and I hear his voice yelling over the thunder echoing in my head.

What happened to you? What did you do? Why won't you answer me?

And then the storming sea swells, filling my ears again and the shouts wash away with the waves. The thread that I've been pulling at goes red, white,white, red, white, white, and back to red. I've reached the front of the sweater again, where the red begins again.

 My sweater was never red before. In my ears, reverberating-echoing in my head, The rushing crushing crashing waves turn into crushing crunching cracking bones and the rushing roaring blowing winds turn into wheezing squeezing screaming voices.

Just like my family before my all-white sweater turned red.