The stamp of your feet, in shoes two times too big wiped dirt across the bedroom floor when they came to rest upon the headboard and stayed. The toes, wriggling for more room, always. You were always larger than life to me, tall, narrow face and you slept alone.
You wanted to grow into those shoes, never content with the soft slippers bought that winter in 84
before you passed, but the bourbon had eaten its way inside. A man withered by years of consumption with pills, housekeepers, the ghost of my mother malcontent. The echoes of rooms built to house empty furniture, the hollows of your cheek haunt me still.
I tried those shoes on and they never fit me either, though I wear them sometimes, when I think of your struggle, when I think of you dad. Life was bigger than you, to me you were bigger than life. The American dream of the fifties. If they were mine, if I could wear them, I would.
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