They sat in his closet,
His shoes.
In the comfortable dark.
They seemed like him;
Well worn, and content.
I looked them over
Believing they were homelike,
Believing they were soft,
Unlike the hard soles I wear;
The small and binding ones
That sometimes give blisters,
Making me feel that his shoes
Would be much nicer to wear.
"Try them", he said,
And he handed them to me;
So I put them on.
And they didn't seem so bad.
"Walk in them", he then said.
And once I'd walked a mile, or so,
I felt the pebbles that had migrated
into the tears that I hadn't seen before,
I felt the roughness of the tread,
already exhausted from endless journeys;
I bent to disentangle the laces,
frayed from having been tied,
and retied.
My feet hurt.
I put on my own shoes.
They felt different.
They suited me more;
with new-found room to grow.