Good Shoes

My grandma taught me how to sew as a little girl.

I had home made dresses that wrapped around my little body,

Like grandma’s rosary wrapped around her hands.

She had unusually young hands for an old woman.

She told me that you get a lot further when there’s no hole in your shoe.

My grandma taught me how to sew as a little girl,

So Ive been patching up the pieces of my soul,

Since it was first broken into.

By thieves who know nothing of the consequences of wandering hands,

And lips that only know how to eat.

Never cooked a damn thing in their life,

Never gave life,

Never birth nothing but a legacy of blood,

And confused little girls,

Who run sands through their wounds,

To exfoliate fingerprints off of their skin,

Ive been patching up my heart,

Ever since I realized that my daddy only loved me silent.

Daughters don’t remain favourites,

If they grow into their humanity.

So I patch the broken pieces of family dinners,

That turn into fights where full mouths of food,

Get digested with insults,

And backhand slaps,

And momma’s tears as deserts,

Wondering how her mother taught me to sew,

And taught her to hold unmatching garment together.

So she gives a man every bit of her innocence,

Trades her good upbringing for his generational curses,

Just to say she remained married.

She sticks the needle in her eyes,

With the thread so black,

That it draws outlines of perfect,

Into his red flags.

She is an artist,

In the ways she stitch together stories,

To keep the help from barging in the doors,

And removing the buttons out of her children’s eyes.

I guess I am artist too...

Ive been patching up my self esteem,

Ever since I learned that being good to people,

Isnt good enough to keep them.

So I get holes on my soul,

And have to remember,

you get a lot further when there’s no hole in your shoe,

so I patch up footsteps to the next love,

and pray they’re not like the  last,

an end up with bigger holes on these soles.

I walk over fire and ice to love songs,

and being called beautiful,

By griots with nothing but hurt beneath their tongues.

so I patch and patch, adding cloth,

and leather,

boiling my soul in water so scolding,

that everything tightens at the seams.

Because you get a lot further when theres no hole in your shoe.

I've been patching up friendships,

putting mud in the cracks,

and waiting for sunlight to melt it into cement,

before the water rises,

and we all sink under the things we don’t say,

just to keep each other afloat.

You get a whole lot further when theres no hole in your shoe.

My grandma taught me how to sew as a little girl.

I had home made dresses that wrapped around my little body,

Like grandma’s rosary wrapped around her hands.

Young from all of the things she put together,

In her 60 years of loving and learning.

I just spent 500 dollars and counting,

On a pair of earth piercing,

Foot folding free find,

Size 7s,

Red bottom full of the blood from all the innocence I no longer have,

Some good shoes sold with compliments on the side,

This is the click clack of deliverance,

Not church shoes,

But the kind you greet the devil with.

Because I have places to go

And you get a whole lot further when theres no hole in your shoes.