1.
Here are your shoes. I only wore them once.
Ever been still, nothing apparent, objects settled around you, and your heart beats off-rhythm and you�re all legs and action? Well, there I was laying quiet, letting the night hold me in its warm mouth when it happened and I found myself out, walking around in it.
I walked past the pizza place, the Y. Past Virgie�s, a conglomeration of burps, muscles, last nights, white skin and beer smiles, a pulsating circle that fell back on itself as I went by. It was too much for me that night, though I have spent many hours in similar places, laughing the hearty laugh, bright in the dim of humming brains.
I can't be certain, but I am pretty sure that even in the low light of the street your shoes showed up and people looked at them. I looked down and there they were, and I nearly walked into a mailbox, smiling.
2.
I stopped at the Dairy Mart, more or less to hear my own voice. Hello, the cashier and I said, almost at the same time.
How ya doing, he said and I wanted to thank him. I put together the intricate movements to buy a pack of gum.
Nice shoes, he said, and before I had a chance to tell him, thanks, they�re not mine, he said, My grandfather was a cobbler. He had a little shop, open early in the morning, closed by two. Nice life.
It�s a dying art, I said. He slapped back my change on the counter like he was angry. Maybe he was.
I don�t even chew gum anymore since the teeth trouble. Still, the solid shape in my pocket held the brief encounter, a sweet gentle weight. I have the unopened box on my nightstand, making its own mark against time.
3.
Outside, this sound. It had been years since I heard it, even more years since I made it myself.
The sound came from a woman and she was gone with it. The shadows of branches moved around her, always missing. She took a breath finally. Her wet eyes opened to the space between us.
I saw grief and myself: an old man with a pack of gum and a key to a dark room in his pocket, in someone else�s shoes. By tomorrow I�d have a blister, my world to consist of a fluid-filled sphere on my right big toe.
Don�t worry, I wanted to say, you�re all right. It will be all right. I wanted to touch her, smooth her forehead, to show her the tulips right behind her all closed up now, and tell her how they�d be blooming like idiots in tomorrow�s sun.
Gum? I asked instead. She moved away from me and I walked, each step closer to the distance.