Shoes

It’s sad to me that objects that we are so willing to keep in our lives
are seldom about the objects themselves at all.
take for instance this pair of orange shoes
high tops
black stripes
a white leather circle with a deep-set inlay of a black star
something I proudly wore day in day out

now they sit at the back of my closet

and how far have they come
they have traveled thousands of miles with me
over states, in planes, over millions of people,
their decorated soles staring through the floor of the
cabin to the cities below,
they have been so much and so little to me.
Only shoes and yet, now
they are worn out to a point that I don’t dare to wear them
anymore
in fact,
they have been this way for quite some time,
but I do not get rid of them

I feel this about them now:
they are only memories of where I have been
and I am a fool for sentiment;
I do not feel a sense of longing to slip them on my feet
go running through town,
or to break dress code at work and chance a fall in their worn out soles.

It is that somehow they keep me connected to you

I do not want to let them go because I remember a boy
given these shoes as a gift
I remember the friend who purchased them for him
and somehow within the fibres of this worn out pair
that memory has held
It may be cliché
but it is cliché for a reason
and to say that it is cliché for a reason may be cliché
but these sentiments are anchored in everyone
in one form or another
so they have to be cliché
and I’m waiting for the day that there will be a phrase to explain
the clichéness of “it’s cliché for a reason”
and I’m waiting for the day that I won’t feel I have to depend
on the seven-year old memory of shoes to know that we couldn’t drift away.