The Ribbon

She felt it all that one fall afternoon, but at the same time she was numb. She laid on her bed buried into warmth, gazing out to the shining winding river just beyond the place to transport her soul. The dead leaves swirled around the ground in the wind howling louder than a sad wolf. Her eyes went back to the blankets, an offwhite cotton blend. She tried to cure her boredom; the monotone beeping being her only company. She knew what was coming; she felt it but first her mind got taken into a dream, a fantasy where she saw her child blowing out candles on his birthday party. The whistling wind caused the fantasy to disperse.

The room was bland and despairing but her incredible visions lightened the room. She imagined him sitting next to her. Her grown child, holding her hand as the one above comes down to take her to her true home. Her dreams danced around the room like a movie, one that she wished so bad to come true. She reached out to her baby and in a mist, he vanished.

As fast as they vanished, new thoughts appeared but they seemed to be an evocation and she retrospected on the souvenirs she brought into her mind. At first they were happy. The thrill of christmas morning, the freedom of her first car. She then saw her stomach, rounder than normal. She went to her parents in elation only to come back regretful and banished. She beared the child solitarily, and he was beautiful and pure only for him to be taken away from her right away. Pain washed over her body like a tsunami; drowning in her own tears. The waves were so intense, she felt the earthquake under her feet. She wept over her baby whose life had expired too soon and then like a snapping rubber band, reality came forward, revealing the plain walls and stale air. Again, new memories flooded back to her.

She realized something was irregular during one of her nightly baths. There was something abnormal right under her left breast. In the memory she can see the transformation of herself. Her gorgeous blond locks that once left girls envious was clumping and collecting in the cracks of her old wooden floor. Her greatest sadness was finding it in places around her home like a dreadful game of hide and seek. Her pillow, favorite hat, her brush. Her face had sunk, her healthy youth had been held hostage by the ribbon. The ribbon seemed to have her tied up like a puppet, completely controlling every movement and breath. She cried in reality along with herself in the memory, consoling with her past self.

Her breathing became heavier, like she was slowly getting pressed to death. Although she was crying, she had the most beautiful grin on her face. She was delighted for the future, the future that would be so short, but so long. Her eyes became droopy, her eyesight was blurry with tears resting in her eyelids.

She got lifted out of her bed, and her eyes widened more than they ever had before. The gray dreary room turned a blinding white, but it did not burn her eyes. Her face was frozen for the force carrying her was the strongest force that she had ever dealt with. Every memory from birth to the moment just a while ago flashed in her mind like a jumbled animation and before she knew it, she was transported to a whole new setting. Before she opened her eyes, she knew it was perfect. Her Goldilocks hair had grown back to length, her baggy sunken eyes had returned to their proper places. She opened her eyes which revealed a room of pastel, and she was comfortably seated on an oak rocking chair. She looked down and sleeping in her arms was her beautiful baby whom she will finally be able to meet.