Shoes

A Poem

I can’t think, off the top of my head, just how many fairy tales are about shoes. Shoes worn to pieces, shoes that dance by themselves until the person dies, is it because they were burning or made of fire or just because of exhaustion, I forget, I forget, … I remember the one about the glass slipper, or golden slipper, on the stairs. I remember the one about the princesses who danced all night and lied about it all day. I remember the one about people living in a shoe but let’s be honest, that’s more nursery rhyme isn’t it? There’s a difference, I think. The point is, shoes are important and they are a vehicle for all sorts of messages about life and death and love and morality and symbolism so tell me what it means when the shoe fits or doesn’t tell me what it means when parts have to be cut off and blood drips from a shoe — tattle-tale of the wrong one, the wrong girl, more fraud than trickster we can’t always mix our metaphors on this; tell me what it means to be sensible and worthy to have shoes that bring you back home with three clicks — an American fairy tale,I know, I know, tell me what it means to follow the path through the woods, leaving a trail or covering tracks, tell me what it means to walk down the stairs and keep the shoes on this time or to go barefoot — done with it all, uncivilized perhaps, or post-civilized by now; we have seen what footwear can do to women, men, marriages, love — we may as well touch the grass or cobblestones or dirt road with our bare feet in the event it might feel like freedom.

Jenny Justice is a poet mom who longs to bring poetry to life in ways that spark empathy, connection, joy, and feeling. She loves writing love poems, climate change awareness poems, poems for kids, and of course, poems about poetry and poets. You can follow her on Medium and at Jenny Justice, Writer. You can follow her poetry at Justice Poetic.