She stood by last night’s bonfire. Flames leapt high, our drunken faces and dancing limbs in hideous relief, like Dante’s inferno on the shore of this northern bay.
Driftwood burns to cool embers. We flee to our tents to couple, or sleep it off.
Night shifts, heavy indigo to thin green, cool breeze shredding night to red dawn.
She slips off her shoes, shucks off sweatshirt and jeans, no zip cracks the morning silence. Wasted thin by her disease, she steps into the water to die on her own terms. She did that.
That part I want to remember.
© Liz Husebye Hartmann (2018)
Carrot Ranch Rodeo 2018: category—memoir, prompt—She did it.
Valley of the Trolls 
Very powerful, and also very sad. You write well!
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Thanks, Ann!
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whoa.
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Was this your entry? Wow, what a thing to remember – it’s very sad, and yet the perspective of the main character (you?) makes even the reader not want to place blame on anything. Calming, happy, yet morose. Congrats for winning!
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Thanks.
Yeah, a melding of my experiences re; survivor’s guilt, I guess.
Still working things out…
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Good luck to you as you do so – and you were brave for sharing!
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Thank you! And maybe it also helps others feeling the same…
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