Black Boot

 

My hand gropes the wardrobe floor. Unseeing, it feels for what it needs. A black boot. My hand roots at the arch and the instep, and a memory drifts to the surface, inchoate, like smoke shifting and forming.

I am holding the black receiver of a telephone, the cord coiling at my wrist. My father has handed it to me, defeated, diminished.

There is a question. I have no answer. None that I could make. The handset, heavy, I place back in its cradle, walk away. My father's face is stricken.

Now, I grasp my black boot, memory's stick stirring the waters. 

Siobhan O'Sullivan.