Last week my daughter asked why there was duct tape wrapped around my foot. “To dissolve a callous,” I said, which is something I read duct tape can do (among its zillion other uses). She shook her head in a sad but familiar way, and I laughed and thought of the foot doctor who once lectured me on how I should stop wearing high heels.

Dude. You clearly do not know me at all, I thought.

These feet of mine have tromped up and down a thousand mountains and through a thousand woods and they show it. Occasionally I pick things up with my extra-long toes rather than bend down and use my fingers, and no, I’m not kidding. I always felt so sorry for Cinderella.

The Lost Shoe, by Karen Bjork Kubin

Doodle, doodle, doo,
The Princess lost her shoe:
Her highness hopped,
The fiddler stopped,
Not knowing what to do.

It had never before occurred to me
to kick it off.
And you know princesses 
don’t just lose things, right?

I have not found the courage yet
to chuck the other.
For now, the chill and bite of floor
against skin is almost more

than I can bear. Let me feast on it.
Give me earth. Give me
time, and I will bare the other,
will bare the rest,

and I do not need your music anymore.
I have my own, 
and steps to learn,
a dance to keep, and turn,
and turn.

Click here for more information about poet and violinist Karen Bjork Kubin.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter