This Ribbon is Red

Stella has the sort of face most people are unlikely to remember. They are unlikely to remember it, because, chances are, they didn’t even notice it in the first place. It’s round and small and white and blank, with wide, vague-looking eyes that look right passed you. Not at you or through you, but passed you. As if there is something infinitely more fascinating, more intriguing just beyond your left ear.

(Once Stella looked passed me so utterly absorbed in that spot just beyond my left ear, that I looked round, searching for the wonder that she saw there. There was nothing there of course and I was treated to her disdainful look. Her look that makes me feel that Stella’s world is the norm and I’m the one who’s acting odd.)

I could carry on and tell you about her clothes and her hair. How she always wears the same pleated, tartan skirt with a different coloured jumper - each colour chosen to match the colours on the skirt - and how she ties her hair with a red ribbon. The same red ribbon every day.

(A red ribbon – it always seems to come back to ribbons doesn’t it?

‘The ribbons that tie us, that join us as one. That help us find each other in this tangled world.’

That’s what you used to tell me. Do you remember? Do you see yourself in this? Or have you already passed me by?)