I threw away an old pair of shoes today.
They were a few years old
and the seams had begun to burst
particularly about the sole, there was one hole big enough
to slide a toe through.
It’s winter and I don’t need them anymore
so they became trash.

Someone returned a relic of my past to me recently.
It was a dreamcatcher,
a furnace big enough to fit my most evil of nightmares.
It was a gift from a person I once knew.
I was looking at it one night
for a long time;
I took it from the wall where it had been hanging
and tossed it into a nearby garbage can.

I can handle my nightmares on my own now.

I’m shaking off the weights of the things I don’t need
because,
if there’s a lesson I’ve learned in my adulthood,
it is to travel often
and to travel light.

Plain and simple, I didn’t need those old shoes.
I have leather boots.
They’re warm and waterproof and will never get holes in them.

They were as good as dead weight-

so I let them go.