—I WONDERED WHEN YOU’D SHOW

 

 

Chartreuse

 

It’s not easy to lie to yourself, but he keeps trying anyway. Empty bottles line the floor of his study like spooky glass dolls. Dead soldiers, he used to call them, until his brother used that army-issued gun.

There are more bottles in the garage bin, there are always bottles being recycled and he wonders, each time one runs dry, if he hasn’t swilled from it before. Dead soldiers reincarnated.

His ex-wife collected her own bottles, French and Italian perfumes, crystal and Chartreuse-colored glass the color of their niece’s eyes.

His niece is a snow angel now, but she used to love white storms, being towed on a snowmobile by a rope, down the hill off Panther lake. She’d never let him skip a turn, same as she’d never stop squealing until the time she did.

He keeps a lone bottle on the shelf by Amy’s photo, age six, her eyes sparkling like green apples. This bottle he’s stuffed with snow, and every hour or so, he sets it inside the miniature freezer on the floor by his ankles, which he imagines are shackled. 

He takes a drink, and another and another until he hears Amy giggling behind him, shouting, “Faster, Uncle! Faster!”