I left my boots in your car, the boots with the steel toecaps and the yellow and black stripy laces. The boots I wore as you, full of rage, threw my toolbox into the canal, and the boots that kicked a series of deep dents into your car, that same car where I have left them.
Now they must be rattling about in the footwell, among the cans of off-brand energy drink and Styrofoam kebab boxes.
Perhaps you already gave them to your cousin, the one that does cash-in-hand between his studies, or to your uncle Marcus, who will be trying to flog them at the Duffield Carboot.
More likely you have forgotten them, learnt not to see them anymore, as you grind about in that shit-heap Fiesta, over to Belper to see your physiotherapist, or to the lizard shop on the edge of Sheffield.
Perhaps my boots will always sit there.
Once the engine dies, steel car with leather seats and leather boots with steel caps will rot together outside your dad’s barn, into one lump of waste.
J M F Casey is an artist and writer from the UK. He has exhibited in London, Ghent and Derbyshire and has had writing published online by The Educator, Misery Tourism and Nauseated Drive. He currently lives with a trainee mystic in the hills of Derbyshire, devoting himself to research and short fiction. twitter.com/jmfcasey