Boots by Lia Liqokeli

Once my dad bought me a pair of boots. It was an autumn day. We came from the village, just us, my dad and me.

Since we got a little money after selling some chickens, we went to a market place where you could find piles of the cheapest clothes and shoes.

Dad stopped, asked for the price, looked at me and said that we are buying.

The boots were warm, high up the thigh, and comfortable.

You could tie them up the whole thigh and they were the brownest and ugliest among all girl boots in the world.

But I was a big eyed and less than talkative child who was in love with the noise of avalanches and rain. Who also loved the floods of Spring.

But I was scared of people, and I was scared of my Dad, and I could not say that I didn’t like those boots.

Then we came back home and I didn’t cry.

In the morning I tied the laces up my thighs and went to school.

The road was frozen and my footsteps sounded like chestnuts bursting on a hot pan.

This continued the whole winter, on to the next winter, and then onto the third winter.

Mum and dad were relieved that my feet were warm.

The whole winter, the next winter, and then onto the third winter,

I would come back from school with warm feet.

Filled with thoughts that my boots were the reason I was so ugly and unloved.

And I would especially blush passing one particular house, where smoke used to go up lazily and curtains were shaking tepidly.

But somehow my feet were not growing enough for me to cause the spring flood.

And to destroy those brown dams, that ugliness and loneliness of getting back home with warm feet and cold hands.

And burnt back from the lukewarm look that came from behind the curtains.

Then my feet grew and my eyes got smaller.

There were some avalanches and land sliding straight on my head.

I thought that nothing would burn my back again.

Nothing would force me to put on something that I didn’t like...

But nothing has changed in reality.

I am still wearing this ugly life.

As somebody threw soil into brown boots and planted me in them.

Sometimes life waters me so that I won’t dry.

But if I start blooming, blossoms will die so that I can’t make any fruit.

And the long laces of lone life

Tied up tightly up the whole body,

To the neck, tied up strongly.

They are calm in winter and spring,

Summer and autumn.

As returning back to the house, where the smoke doesn’t go up and curtains do not shake. 

The house is ugly but comfortable; it is the most reliable.

As the brown boots my dad once bought,

And those boots are the strongest among all girls lives in the whole world.

By Lia Liqokeli

Translated by Madona Selimashvili