Her Boots

She stood there in those beat-up boots, laces knotted like some half-assed noose, shawl hanging off her shoulders the way a drunk hangs off a barstool—loose, tired, ready to slide off and die. Out ahead, the lake was frozen solid, a big, grey nothing staring back at her, the closest thing to forgiveness she’d ever get.

Little flecks of ice drifted in the wind, stinging her face like cheap gin stings the throat, settling on her lashes until she had to blink the cold away. She thought about the Sistine Chapel for some damn reason—God’s finger reaching out and all that holy horseshit—then thought about her own life, a crummy little scrapbook of bad lays, worse decisions, and one kid she’d vacuumed out of herself in a clinic that smelled like bleach and regret.

She folded the shawl, peeled off the camisole like she was shedding the last lie she still believed in, kicked the boots toward the snowbank—let the trash men figure it out. In her coat pocket: three bent strips of Valium, a half-pint of gin warm from her body, and a goodbye note nobody would read anyway.

The kid she never had floated up in her head one last time, a small ghost without a face, no blame left in it. She walked out onto the ice until it cracked like a cheap promise, then let the black water take her in, slow and easy, the way you finally let the bottle win.

on the Nordic coast,
hard snow crunches underfoot,
no other option.