Abandoned by winter

Sunglasses on, shielding me from the world. There’s a prescribed sedative in my pocket, just in case. I’ll take any scrap of delusion for comfort.

I leave my house the way a foal takes its first steps, reaching for brick, for stone — anything to prove the outside is as solid as the inside.

Winter is a bed I leave replenished by spring. Clear skies ruin any chance of backing out. I prefer them clouded, oppressive. Indoors by four. Slipping out again after dark.

November arrives flushed and eager. Dim halls. People who remind me I’m painfully out of place - the youngest in the room. The air smells like a lavish mask, and somehow I love it.

A hand lands on my shoulder. I blunder through small talk, trying to taste the words before releasing them. I can’t stop looking at the perfectly straight row of teeth in front of me, held inside a tight perimeter of dark red lipstick.

I let a bath run for too long — bubbles pile so high they fall to the floor.

I think about those teeth and the words that left them behind.

Continents crossed without panic. No sedatives. No veneer.

Water reaching her ankles, winter left behind — and the freedom to leave again.