A Shoe Tragedy

Another tragedy involving red shoes: a pair of Gary Castles in a sublime wine red, with a heart that caught fire like Dorothy’s heels in the sunshine (more subtly than the stinky shoes), and a smooth patent finish like a glossy cherry.

High, yet not impossibly so, with a little strap adding a lick of mary-jane; they delighted me. Until the day the heel on one snapped in half.

Now, the very sight of them pains me. They have gathered dust, pining on a shoe rack, waiting for the day they would have the heels replaced. But I cannot bear to see the patent heels lopped off, with the ugly stacked versions (which would be the most a cobbler could offer me) put in their place.

So fare thee well, pretty shoes. You go to a far better place where you belong… No, not Shoetopia; that’s just a myth hard-hearted Russian cobblers made up to console bereaved fashionistas (she says with meaningful rancour, dwelling unlovingly on one particular stinging memory). I mean the trash can.