All about the other shoe (Original Poem)

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All about the other shoe

Clouds lay over the deserted valley,
the corpses of trees decorating it.
In the middle of it all rests an old apple tree,
its roots now dead, its fruit rotten.

Right by the base of the apple tree the first shoe has fallen,
inevitably weighed down by all it’s carrying and all it knows.

The shoe is mud brown and worn to the frame,
a dirty yellow lace rests up top the curved tongue.
Around it a circle of grey leaves and dead insects
write in the ground a message of death.

Though if you were to open the shoe,
to peel back the tongue and relax the sturdy lace.
If you were to pick it up and bring your eye closer to its insides,
death would be the very last thing you found.

Instead, you’d find memories.
Memories of quiet afternoons and gloomy dusks,
of a quiet breeze and a nice view,
holding her hand and time frozen.

Memories of an empty house
and broken promises,
of a hope beat down forever,
of a smile turned into dust.

But you wouldn’t pick up the shoe,
you wouldn’t peel back the tongue
and the lace would stay sturdy.
You would just walk away.

You would cross the valley,
step by step until the trees were living and the grass green,
until the airs were pure and the sky was blue.
And then, somewhere, in the infinite ocean of broken souls,
the other shoe would drop.

Dedmaco