Day Ten: "Dead Man's Shoes"

Dead Man’s Shoes

You were nameless, poured out
on city streets with every rainstorm,

swept against brick tenements
and corralled into countless alleys.

You saw men dispose of a body
in one such alley, and the world

was epitomized in the cold blistered
soles of your feet, and so gently,

needfully, you pulled the shoes
from his corpse and placed them

on your own. You never expected
your small life to change, never

considered that such a minor act
of the body could become for you

an erasure of your former self,
your next steps a parable of empathy.