Tatami (畳)
GLITCH CINEMA Presents,
TATAMI.
Tatami means to fold or pile up.
This is what we do with time. Fold it. Stack it. Pretend the pile makes sense.
A woman stands in the rain.
Her bag is black. Her lips are red. The dark is everything else.
She is waiting. Not for a car. Not for a man. She is waiting for a version of herself that never arrived.
Cars pass. Headlights cut the rain like prayers no one finishes. Every car is someone leaving somewhere. Every car is someone arriving nowhere.
Beelzebub sits on a traffic light.
Lord of flies. Lord of small irritations. Lord of the buzz inside your head when you try to sleep.
He watches the woman.
He has been watching women like her for centuries. Women who fold themselves into bags they carry. Women who pile their lives into corners and call it organization.
The Enneagram says there are nine types of people.
Beelzebub knows there is only one type. The type that forgets. The type that remembers. Same type. Different weather.
The woman opens her bag.
Inside is a tatami mat folded nine times.
She unfolds it once. Her childhood appears. A room. A smell. A song her mother hummed.
She folds it back.
She unfolds it twice. Her first heartbreak. A boy. A bridge. A sentence that cut her in half.
She folds it back.
Rain keeps falling.
Beelzebub yawns.
The woman unfolds the mat three times. Her father’s funeral. White flowers. Black suits. The silence that lives inside grief.
She folds it back.
She unfolds it four times. A city she left. A self she buried. The airport where she watched her reflection walk away.
Fold.
Five. A child she almost had. A door she almost opened. An almost that still breathes inside her.
Fold.
Six. A job that ate her years. A boss who smiled while stealing her light. Fluorescent brightness that made everything ugly.
Fold.
Seven. A prayer she whispered once. Dehve. Mother. Goddess. Whoever is listening. Help.
The prayer is still traveling. Prayers don’t arrive. They just keep moving. Like cars. Like rain. Like time.
Fold.
Eight. A lover who understood her. For one night. In one room. Then morning came and understanding left with the light.
Fold.
Nine. Now. Here. Rain. Bag. Black. Red. Dark.
A demon on a traffic light. A woman holding a mat made of everything she ever was.
She unfolds it the ninth time.
The mat is empty.
No. The mat is full.
Full of nothing. Nothing is not absence. Nothing is space. Space for something new.
Beelzebub claps slowly.
The sound is thunder. The sound is wings. The sound is every fly that ever landed on every wound.
He says you figured it out.
She says figured what out.
He says that the folding is the point. The piling is the prayer. You don’t carry your life. Your life carries you.
The woman looks at the mat.
The mat looks back.
Rain stops.
Cars stop.
Light breaks through.
Not sunlight. Something older. Brightness that existed before the sun learned to burn.
The woman folds the mat one final time.
She puts it back in her bag.
The bag is red now.
Her lips are black now.
Everything inverted. Everything the same.
She hears. She always hears. She is the fold and the unfolding.
She is the pile and the scattering. Endlessness is the woman and the bag and the rain and the demon who watches because even demons need something to believe in.
The woman walks.
Not away from. Not toward.
Just walks.
Tatami.
To fold.
To pile up.
To become so layered you disappear.
To disappear so completely you finally arrive.
A woman stands in the rain.
Her bag is black.
Her lips are red.
The dark is everything else.
She is waiting.
She has always been waiting.
She will always be waiting.
The waiting is the prayer.
The prayer is the fold.
Fold.
Unfold.
Beelzebub watches.
The light changes.
The End That Folds Into The Beginning
