All Tied Up

In the late, late hours of the night, those which belong to a woman who blessed my days with sun light, I remember that tiny ribbon.

And just like a single thread that comes loose and with one gentle tug unravels into a much longer and seemingly never ending existence, this ribbon has come loose in my mind as the night was counting down the hours to leave as I lay curled under the light, floral quilt mommie gave me.

I do not know where it is now.

I have no recollection of losing it.

Yet its loss is a certainty I have no proof against.

Like this game I like playing, trailing a shred of thought to know what it was born of, I follow the ribbon backwards.

I tiptoe in the darkness around my memories to try to remember where I might have left it.

But it is here that the game is different. I don't need to know where it came from. The memory of her palms – which make miracles out of paper and glue – holding out my little book which she had just bathed in love, tied up in that ribbon is an image I know just as I know the detailed shape of her finger nails.

Flashes of tying it and untying it, and of leaving it lying to come and claim it again flutter against my eyes. They force me to that day when I think I last saw it.

Even now, I have no sense of where it could've gone. It's existence ended with the end of that memory.

It disappeared.

I tell myself there is no other explanation.

But it leaves me with memories of that morning, of cities, and of green running to keep up with us.

Racing trees, to keep up with me.

I was never a fast runner but I was always trying to reach the end to see if it would meet my expectation and my desire.

Similar to how I feel towards that unpleasant thread that threatens to unlock the tied up order of fellow threads and so ruining their perfection, I don't know how to break it. The fear of tearing things up holds my hands back and reminds me to get the scissors: lose threads are not to be taken so lightly.

Maybe memories don’t end up in boxes.

Perhaps they braid themselves into ribbons that vanish so we are preoccupied with their sudden disappearance rather than the shadow of the memories themselves.

All that remains now is a recollection of the sensation of its texture.

A small golden ribbon.

It's funny, how a thing so petty, so small, could keep someone up all night. Not in an attempt to find it.

No.

I just wanted to make sure it's safe.

Somewhere.