thank you, shoes.

In 1993, I spotted you in a Brit catalogue and you became the lust object of my footwear dreams. A month later I stayed up all night just to giddily order you by phone and enjoy hearing some shopgal's sweet London accent while blowing all my Yule money. It wasn't until you arrived that I realized just how wonderfully odd you were: Shelly's uppers sewn to Docs lasts & soles, the whorled punch patterns wingtipped over steeltoes, and still somehow you were a dress oxford. I would never see your like, no matter how far I traveled.

Together we danced the night away with the ladies, postured & owned in doorways & on streetcorners; you saved my toes nigh countless times, guarded my heels from zealous power walkers, outlasted your retailer's last corporate handoff that eliminated men's shoes altogether, lost a lung to nail that gave you a characteristic wheeze, endured the oven beeswax because you so knew it was for your own good, got minked, polished, scuffed, and polished again until you were parade worthy. I look at you and see the path of the last 20 years of my life, and I see the one set of footprints, and I know it was you that carried me across the desert sands, and that when I shoegazed it was your style that lent me reassurance to look up again and take another step forward.

And you've given me all your steps. Cracked, creased, split, irreparably fissured, and worn through. Even five years ago the cobbler's daughter I dated said that was it, but I wasn't ready to hear it and just bought thicker socks. Thought about plotting you in the backyard, or setting you alight into the pond like a viking at sea for having heroically fallen in the warmarch of time and distance. Instead, together, we'll go to the park on Tuesday with your laces tied, and I'll launch you as hard & as high into the heavens as I can. At the top of your last graceful arc, you'll poetically bolo around a tree branch, and birds will wonder at their luck at being able to nest in you, and squirrels can safely store acorns in your protective toes during your well earned view of the world from on high. Such an ascension is the best I can think of to give you, my handsome pair of Shelly's. Thank you for everything.

While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.