Stubbed toes from stared at cell phones, stitched struggling shoes,
a mixer of well-off wanderers and commoners off on Wednesday,
planning Black Friday blues, but not grandmothers wielding
baseball bats for canes to beat teenage girls like eggs to delights
in store: cotton confections–You know?

Frayed knot. A person is their shoes, their pace,
the smell of new shoes on old feet: wild grown nails,
telling themselves they’re adorable in everything, including
a grave, including another line, tapping toes until another
coffee cup, standing how their husbands do at urinals.

This is what happens when one counts shoes, eight hundred pair,
journeying to stores like handless ships to fabric store shores.
Some clack, some shuffle, some struggle with high mileage strollers
towards chocolates or candied pee-cans, the bookstore, though,
is closed, making the mall as ridiculous as socks in flip-flops,
off-brand tapered jeans, truncated ankles, leading to expensive
stores with quick refund methods:

in minutes your money is back
in someone else’s bank, but only after you’re thanked in a
foreign dialect, elegant, but I hope they’re regional rednecks from
a place that holds hands, prays thanks and that nothing changes.