He let the cornflower blue ribbon slip through his fingers like velvet water.  Standing with his watery eyes looking out of the window toward the setting sun, he knew he should exit the attic before night fell since there was no kind of lighting up there.  He couldn’t move his feet.  It was as if they were cemented to the dry wooden floor.He missed her.  She was no longer there.  His heart ached with every flicker of his mind as he thought through their life.  He was so angry.  He couldn’t believe she would leave him to face this life alone.  She had cried at the end.  She had swore she wouldn’t but she did.  Her tears were ones of regret and sadness that collected in the folds of her wrinkled skin.

He absently knelt again to pick up the ribbon, still looking out of the window.  She always said how childish it was to wear a ribbon in her hair, all the while tying it into a fat of a bow as she could manage.  He rubbed the silk against the pads of his thumb and forefinger.  He had a lot of things of hers, but this one reminded him of her the most.

With a heaving sigh he turned, clutching the ribbon, toward the stairs leading down to the first floor of the house.  On the foot of the stairs sat Lily, his granddaughter.  She looked up at him with large inquiring eyes, her small hand reaching up toward the blue ribbon. At first he resisted, not wanting to let go.  Then slowly he opened up his fingers, feeling cramps he hadn’t realized were there.  Lily cautiously felt the fabric and smiled tentatively at her grandfather.  He closed his eyes, taking a shuddering breath.

When he opened his eyes, Lily stood before him, holding out the ribbon back to him with concern etched around her brow.  He took it from her with a gasp of a drowning man breaking the surface of the water.  He started to clutch the ribbon back to his chest but stopped.  He looked at Lily.  Feeling as if he was moving through water, he slowly took the ribbon, turned Lily around, and tied the ribbon onto her thick brown ponytail.

He made the bow as fat as it could get.

-RCV