[Shoes]

The ice cream truck pretends by moving slowly not to scream. The girls in sunglasses cover their ears. What with the cost of gas, you’d think, one of the boys is saying. I, from the years of painting, can’t flex my arm, the tendons are thickening. The figure inside, as close as I am, still is a shadowy flash, back bending over the freezer chest, lifting and closing and handing. Only the names are listed, not the prices. You know what they are. On the easements, in the lots I cross diagonally, I have noticed a profusion of shoes, odd shoes. Most of them are women’s shoes, with a two-inch heel. Once a moccasin. Always a strew of thrown glass, blue or colorless, glitters near, crushed by feet, and behind me the quiet chewing in the grass as I pause. It’s strange how they are preserved. They seem just slipped from the arch, like commas, still wearable. The lightest things we wear are lost and seen, voices dropping to whispers.