'Flying carpets are overrated' by Noémi Scheiring-Oláh

Flying carpets can pick themselves up and rip away in a dramatic whoosh, blasting You’re such a bitch, you know that? and boom the door behind them.

But this carpet here, guarding the middle of your living room in a veil of sunshine, this carpet will hug the soles of your feet in his warm, yielding yarns, and feel the boom vibrate in your every fibre, in every trembling heartbeat, stirring up the dirt of old yells, and spits, and screams, and booms in the fabric of your flesh.  

If this carpet would ever get the chance to wish for something, he would not wish for the ability to fly. He would wish for the ability to stand. To shift weight on his worn, weaved, silver-grey borders, and unfurl upwards like your cheerful-green fern in the corner, the one you set up chiming reminders for to water, repot, turning it towards indirect light, and combing its tangled threads with your fingers hungry to touch, connect, feel, love.

If he could, this carpet would rise up and block every blow, boom, scream, spit, and bury them deep in his tissues.

But all this carpet can do is hold you when you sink down into his tender embrace, rich with your tangled hair and tiny pieces of sunflower shells. And as you lie in the whisper of sunlight, and furl over your knees, the threads of this carpet – like small, soft fingers –, will swing and sway with your every breath, in, and out, in, and out, beckoning you to keep breathing.