It’s not your shoes at all, actually.
It’s the way you tie them: firmly, decisively

You have good, strong hands:
Van Gogh’s starry night,
Michaelangelo’s David,
and your hands.
You have a very specific way of holding onto things
all at once or not at all
The mountain ridges of your knuckles.

But how could I explain a thing like that?
Instead, I say: “I saw someone with your shoes,
the purple new balance 360s,
and it made me miss you.”

But what it is,
what it really is,

is I saw those shoes and I saw hands that were not yours tying them.