She lost her shoe
a convenient shoe.
A klutzy sandal
not sandals which would
catch the eye of a man
unless he were the sort of man who
had put sex behind him and
was drawn to anything that foretold of comfort
the kind of guy who was long-winded and as
chummy with the females as the males
and always in his head.
A man of numbers and squares.
Why was she going on like this?
A tangent on the type of man she found so unappealing.
The shoe.
Oh yes, that’s right.
The shoe.
She had lost her shoe.
A klutzy sandal
not sandals that would catch the eyes of a man.
Here I am again
playing back the mental tape of
the type of man I wouldn’t want.
The shoe.
Back to the shoe.
What to do about the shoe.
Buy another pair?
But with what money?
Forget I ever owned the sandals?
Such a comfortable and convenient shoe.
The shoe that had enabled her
to be raped.
If she hadn’t been wearing the sandals
she could have ran faster and perhaps gotten away.
But she had gotten away
because she was alive.
She looked around at her studio apartment.
She was in her own place. Safe.
No cuts, bruises, and even no sperm.
He had gone soft and pulled out. Then he was upset.
Not about his limpness—but about his problems.
She had put her arm around him and
asked him to share. Not that she cared about his problems.
She cared about remaining alive.
She didn’t want him to kill her out of fear.
It worked. The sympathetic arm around his shoulders.
He was older than her by about ten years. “My family is Italian.
There’s so much pressure. My wife is pregnant.”
She consoled him like she imagined a call girl would—or a counselor.
But she was just a student with a boyfriend
who would be so angry when she told him.
He would think her no longer completely his just like she no longer
had a complete pair of sandals.
And that’s when the tears finally came.