Too-tight boots - Poem

Those boots were too tight.

Yours from your youth,

too small for me.

Still you forced them onto my feet and

dragged me to the river

of ice too thin for me and my too-tight boots.

The last of a hard winter.

You pulled me along,

kicking against the dead weight of too-tight boots.

Hot blood soaked through my socks

as toenails broke adjoining skin,

but I only felt your pain

as you sank your claws into my wrist,

deep impressions of tiny crimson crescent moons,

just to remind me of your unnatural strength.

I tried to prise your fingers open

and begged for you to let go

of my wrist, of the hold you had on me.

But I tripped over my feet,

numbed from too-tight boots and

snow crunched beneath my knees.

In that moment, you stopped

and hunched over me.

Thought maybe you had seen yourself in me.

And you did.

Still you grabbed me by the scruff and

threw me to the ice.

I grappled for the shrubbery

to centre me, to hold me down

and I remember looking back to you

for sympathy, foolishly longing for a fleeting comfort,

for the assurance of a secret harness or shallow depths,

but your eyes were dead

clouded glass marbles,

shattered orbs

awaiting disaster.

And then the river groaned

beneath my bladed feet,

weaponised to secure me.

But my too-tight boots dragged me down,

and splintered the too-thin ice

and I fell through

blindly thrashing against the surging vortex.

I reached for you

to pull me up to the safety of dry land,

to suck the water from my shrunken lungs

and cut away these too-tight boots,

But I never found your hand.

So I let the raging waters embrace me,

carry my body beneath

until my hair tangled in surrounding briar

and abandoned me,

a white pain across my scalp,

too much to bear,

so I suckled sweetened algae bloom

until this winter faded to eternal summer.

By the time they pulled me from the water

my face was hardly mine.

Wax lips, purple torn skin,

red voodoo eyes,

like one of those dolls you never let me play with.

I had years left in me,

but now I will never know

what it is to love

as you did those too-tight boots.