The Red Shoes

Through the silence, the shoes are a night without someone to share a bed with, though

a storm builds outside the bedroom window. Naked is her body without her red shoes; red

is the sky in the dream of the shoes at her feet. A woman is a woman without red shoes

laced on her arched feet, but the shoes dance whether she laces them up or not.

The woman who is not a dancer will dance once she laces the shoes on her arched feet,

once her feet are arched in the shoes, red will be the color of her toe nails and her soles.

And what of her soul? That soul will be laced up, too, and the dance will be a dance of a night in bed

with a lover through a storm. The need to dance is the same as the need to live, without questions,

without knowing the next step. The need takes the lead in the dance to the next stage, to the next lover

until the dance is all one knows, all one needs. Yes, the shoes lead to a door inside this woman;

the door opens a room she didn’t know was there. And once inside, she dances the dance of no return,

a threat she refuses to heed, a space she must explore, crossing a threshold, closing the door behind her, on the woman

she believed she was before the shoes brought a tune to which she hangs on for life, barely keeping up.