“The Ribbon Beneath the Ash”
The old market in Siem Reap had long since lost its color. What once bustled with the scent of lemongrass and the chatter of vendors now stood quiet, its stalls skeletal, its awnings sagging like tired eyelids. But beneath the dust and decay, something stirred—a memory, a promise, a ribbon.
Sophea walked slowly, her sandals whispering against the cracked stone. She was not old, but she carried herself like someone who had lived through too many endings. Her eyes, dark and deliberate, scanned the remnants of the market with the precision of someone searching for something she wasn’t sure existed anymore.
She stopped at a stall draped in faded silk. It had once belonged to her grandmother, Mae, who sold hand-stitched undergarments to women who wanted beauty hidden beneath their everyday lives. Mae believed that even the unseen deserved elegance. She used to say, “A ribbon on your underwear is not for others—it’s for the part of you that remembers you’re still alive.”
Sophea reached beneath the stall’s counter and pulled out a small wooden box. Inside, nestled among yellowed receipts and rusted scissors, was a single pair of panties—delicate, ivory, and adorned with a crimson bow. The ribbon was frayed, but it held its shape, defiant against time.
She pressed it to her chest and closed her eyes.
Twenty years earlier, Mae had stitched that ribbon for a girl who had just turned thirteen. Sophea had come home from school crying, her uniform stained with red, her classmates’ laughter still ringing in her ears. She felt monstrous, betrayed by her own body.
Mae didn’t flinch. She cleaned Sophea gently, wrapped her in a sarong, and sat her down at the sewing table. “You are not broken,” she said. “You are becoming.”
She stitched the bow slowly, deliberately, as if each loop and knot could bind Sophea’s shame into something sacred. “This,” Mae said, holding up the finished piece, “is your first armor. Not to hide you, but to remind you that you are worth adorning.”
Sophea wore it under her uniform the next day. No one saw it, but she walked differently. She felt the ribbon against her skin like a secret strength.
Now, standing in the ruins of the market, Sophea felt the weight of that memory. She had spent years trying to forget—moving to Phnom Penh, marrying a man who preferred silence to stories, working in an office where her name was just a line on a spreadsheet. When Mae died, Sophea didn’t return for the funeral. She told herself it was logistics, but really, it was guilt.
She had abandoned the woman who taught her that beauty was resistance.
But Mae had left her something. A letter, found months later in a drawer beneath old sewing patterns.
“My darling Sophea,
If you are reading this, I am gone. But I hope you are not lost.
I know the world will try to strip you of softness. It will tell you that strength is loud, that power is hard. But remember: the quiet things endure. A ribbon. A touch. A story whispered in the dark.
You are my story. And you are not finished.
Love always, Mae.”
Sophea folded the letter and placed it beside the ribbon. She looked around the market, at the ghosts of women who had once come here to feel beautiful. She saw their shadows in the silk, their laughter in the wind.
She knew what she had to do.
The reopening was modest. Sophea didn’t have much money, but she had Mae’s patterns, her sewing machine, and her memory. She called the shop “Beneath,” a name that made people pause, then smile.
She didn’t advertise. Women came because they remembered. They brought daughters, nieces, friends. They came not just for the garments, but for the ritual. Sophea would sit with each woman, ask her about her life, her fears, her dreams. Then she would stitch a ribbon—sometimes red, sometimes gold, sometimes black. Each one was different. Each one meant something.
One day, a woman named Dara came in. She was in her sixties, her face lined with grief. Her husband had died the year before, and she hadn’t worn anything but gray since.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” Dara said.
Sophea smiled. “Maybe you’re ready to remember yourself.”
Dara cried as Sophea measured her waist. She cried as she chose a deep violet silk. She cried when Sophea stitched a silver ribbon onto the waistband.
“I feel foolish,” Dara said.
“You feel,” Sophea replied. “That’s never foolish.”
The shop became more than a place to buy underwear. It became a sanctuary. Women came to shed shame, to reclaim softness, to adorn the parts of themselves the world had ignored.
Sophea kept Mae’s box beneath the counter. She never used the original ribbon—it was sacred. But she showed it to women who needed to see that beauty could survive decay.
One evening, as the sun bled across the sky, a young girl came in. She was quiet, her eyes heavy. Sophea recognized the look. She led her to the sewing table, handed her a needle, and said, “Let’s stitch something together.”
The girl hesitated. “I don’t know how.”
Sophea smiled. “Neither did I. But someone taught me.”
They stitched in silence, the thread looping like a heartbeat. When they finished, the girl held up the ribbon—soft pink, trembling, perfect.
Sophea placed it in the girl’s palm. “This is yours. Not to hide you. To remind you.”
The girl nodded. She didn’t speak, but her eyes said everything.
In the quiet of the market, Sophea sat alone, the box open beside her. She held Mae’s ribbon and whispered, “I remember.”
And somewhere, beneath the ash and silence, Mae smiled.
