Two Silver Ribbons
Poet: R. Angela O’Brien
I was driving for petrol when I saw her walking by the side of the road past an open green patch where the stormwater gathers in a tiny lake. She was slender
as a willow wand in a mid-shin black skirt made from some lightweight fabric – a cheesecloth, I think – and, wrapped
near its hem, two broad silver ribbons. She stepped with a swing, the cloth floated and twinkled, flipped by her sandals. It was the flickering silver as
the skirt fluttered I’d noticed. Her hair hung loose and long, down to her waist, a maiden’s glory, streaked with grey.
She would have been eighty, if a day. I could see in her the girl she once was. Fresh and free, lovely and lissome. I had a skirt like that in my own girlhood –
blue as lapis lazuli, with a pink paisley motif. No ribbons, though, and that brought a pang. Now, dressed in track pants and runners and a sloppy grey shirt, no one would see the girl in me. Sweet Jesus, I thought, what have I lost? What gained, and at such a cost? Then she dropped into rear-view and I turned away from the past to the station and the bustling day.
R. Angela O’Brien is a Tasmanian poet and writer of speculative and literary fiction. She has a PhD in unconscious learning and degrees in psychology, fine art, and mathematics. Her poetry and short fiction have been published in Epiphany, Abyss and Apex; ACEIII, an anthology of short fiction from Australian emerging writers; and the International Journal of the Humanities.