In this poem I wrote alongside a little--
I guess an etching and an ink print of the shoes
that I wore to my sister's memorial.
"Open-Toed Shoes."
Figure one.
Shoes worn once with collapse intuited.
A. Heel-- 2.5 inches, wooden, faux.
I'd never fallen on a stage, on a sidewalk,
in a bad relationship, never.
Not a single heartbreak--
sneakers and sandals, tomboy, wanderer, method.
Stay low to the ground.
The break would wait, plus B. Toes absent,
bent from two small shoes, from two small budgets,
from a too long childhood.
C. And here, one must step outside the figure.
And here, one must leap--
dream signs, dream visions, and so forth.
Full-grown I landed in Houston and shopped
with a man not shown.
"You look so different," I said to him.
There was blue between us.
"Those shoes?"
he asked, when I lifted them.
"Yes," I said, and slipped them on.
And yes, to their blue dusk straps.
Yes, to the box, to the bag.
And yes, to figuring where to wear them.
Figure 2.
April.
The space where one--
and is led.
Intuit, intuit, intuit.
She fell, they answered, when I asked what happened.
And one week later into the grove
she went while I stood in these shoes.
These shoes.