Josephine

Josephine

 

            “You know,” I said to myself as comfort against the cold January winds blowing in from Boston’s Atlantic, “you don’t have to yell to be mean, like you, Josephine. You use words.”

            I had begun talking to myself that winter. The winter I stole a saltshaker from the dining hall so we could do shots of Tequila with the salt and lime. The winter she started to simply ignore me after both of our attempts to heal our own faults of ill friendship, as if that word is a luxury we can afford. The times as they are give no allowances.

            I battled the wind back to my dorm at the university, the cold glass saltshaker still in my pocket. I hadn’t taken it out yet, it had just sat there for three weeks in my jacket, hidden from those hostile days.

            “Actually,” I say to myself again, “you’re worse than this shaker of salt.” I took it out and looked at it while scraping my feet over the frozen-over sidewalk. It was simple glass, with a slightly rusted top. But it was in my admiration of this trinket that my foot caught ice and I fell forward, the glass saltshaker shattering in my palm.

“Fuck.”

 Snow, salt, blood, and ice congealed across my broken lifeline, burning like no other. No frostbite hurt this much, no freeze stung so bitterly.  Colder than the worst wind chills, my hand ached, covered in muddy, bloody chunks of snows and salts, jagged cuts racing across my sour flesh.

“Josephine, you’re a real bitch to me, even a week after we’ve lost our touch, you know that? Karma, you haven't been any better, either.”