text: The thread started to unravel. He figured he could be 20 minutes late to the meeting in conference room 3. An annual update on compliance with regulations regarding regulatory compliance. Six mandatory hours, with a 45 minute break for some bland turkey pitas with too much mayo and shredded iceberg lettuce and your choice of a 12 ounce can of Coke, Diet Coke or Sprite from the red Igloo cooler with the scuff on the side. Six years of this meeting, and not a single memory that stuck in his mind from any of them. Except for the cooler. He remembered that scuff because it resembled the scar on his leg from that time he crashed his bike when he was 13, trying to impress the new girl who had just moved in across the street. She laughed. He ran. He hid. He planning to avoid her until the end of time, but three months later he got over it. And now he had a cool scar and a story to tell. But nothing interesting ever happened in these meetings. The lecture droned on so his mind wandered. His eyes lethargically searched the room for something more visually appealing than yet another Powerpoint presentation with star wipes between pie charts and boxes of text which were not only printed out in the handout booklet but were being read word for word by a man who had no inflection in his voice of any kind. For the third year in a row the ceiling light in the front left corner of the room was flickering. And then he noticed her. He didn’t really notice her at first, but her blouse. With a hint of a reflection from the lights above, the thin and loose grey fabric forced his mind to stop wandering. The drape of the blouse formed interesting arcs as it flowed across and down her shoulders, reminding him of the heavy, dull surf at the pier ahead of an approaching storm. Her neck was hidden by thick curls of brown, neatly bundled in a black tie, dangling a puffed bundle below that danced and flowed with every slight movement of her head. Her brown hair gave way to shades of red as it intercepted the stream of the morning sun, only to vanish a moment later as the vision of distraction stepped out of the light. But above all, the sight of a lone thread protruding from the seam on her right shoulder demanded consideration. About an inch in length it was all but unnoticeable, but as the speaker droned on it was a hot spring oasis in a tundric wasteland of monotony. Given the choice between wondering how it came to be, how it affected the strength of the fabric, pondering if she knew about it or listening to the mnemonic devices to help you remember for which forms the automated review system would prompt you during third quarter auditing reviews, there was no choice at all. He lived a quiet, solitary life. Work, home, TV, sleep. In earlier years he had explored the world, usually getting on his trustworthy Honda motorcycle and randomly driving down freeways and highways just to see where they went. In 14 years he had visited every state except Alaska, Hawaii, and New Jersey - which bothered him, because while he could ride a bike to New Jersey he couldn’t come up with a single reason why he would. He dove the reefs in Mexico, climbed an eruption volcano in Guatemala, visited Panama where he helped extinguish a fire in a cane field one week then came back the next and helped burn it down. The canvas of his life had once been vibrant and varied, but he had replaced all of that with a simple life of simple routine. His new canvas was empty, framed, and hung on the wall for all to see. And now he was contemplating a single loose thread which was the most interesting thing in the room. Until she, the woman with the freckles, stood up and turned around and walked towards the bland pitas with too much mayonnaise. She, with the gold wire frame glasses balanced in front of her eyes, the flicker of the failing light dancing in a corporate approximation of starlight and shooting stars. She was now the most interesting thing in the room. He would say hi. And in his soul, at the edge of that plain canvas so neatly framed and hung on display, a thread of his known life worked itself free and began to unravel.