Allyssa doesn’t like that I wear shoes in the house. Matty doesn’t either, but he lets me keep them on. Matty and I are happily married. “Shoes” Allyssa says as I walk in the house after a day at work. “Im fine, thanks, how are you?” I want to reply. I inhale and exhale through my nose, give Matty a knowing look, and take off my shoes.  

 

After I shower, I pull on one of my four pairs of wool socks over my wet feet. Then come my shoes. It’s uncomfortable, but it has to be done. No rest for the wicked, I tell myself, and charge down the stairs wearing more or less the same thing I was wearing before I got in the shower.  

 

I’m not an academic. I would love to be able to read poetry but I can’t. I want nothing more than to embody the sitting-cross-legged-on-the-floor-with-a-thick-old-poetry-book-in-my-lap vibe, but it just doesn’t work. I can’t focus on the words. My hips hurt, and so does my back. Worst of all is my right ankle, badly sprained galloping down a mountain in Wyoming. Now that’s more my speed. I can barely focus on books either. My lack of memory scares me just as much as my reading of the number 46 as 64. 

 

I put my shoes back on, however, and I’m good. To me, my shoes are my ability to act. We should re-arrange the house Allyssa muses. In the morning when they come down the stairs, everything is in a different place. They get mad. “I don’t like change.” We should make a garden. Done. We should get a piano. Done. We should get a cat. Done. Welcome to the family Chaos Betty-Crocker-Box-Cake Dewey. We should paint the telephone poles. Wouldn’t that be fun? Done.   

 

I have no patience for laziness, nor complacency. I have no patience for the “we should” followed by a smile and a sigh. Then again I don’t have patience for a lot of things. Maybe I should get off my high horse, hop to the ground, and take my shoes off. 

 

I smile, stoop down over my shoes, and re-tie them, tighter this time. 

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