this is the first thing you notice:

the clinging smell of rubber fogs in your chest,
and the voices have faded into gray murmurs.

ahead, a slow, dutiful march of tourists.
the sun slanting onto the bare walls.

this is what comes next:

you stand in a hallway with four thousand shoes
and the piles of tattered leather spill into the corners.

you take careful footsteps. you have cotton in your throat.
the fear of waking someone laces in your ribs.

how the souls still linger, waiting for your witness
to the empty spaces their feet once filled.

you look over the glass barricades
at the shoes, at the flat expanse of beaten fabric,

and you try to stir up some profound reflection
on humans and evil and what it means to be gone

but even your thoughts seem too loud.
your pulse. an intrusive drumbeat.

this is what catches your eye:

on top of the gray lake,
delicate white shoes. spotted in brown.

the dainty flower designs.
the limp leather: torn, hanging.

this is all you can think about:

a young girls stepping off a train.
the men with guns.

her confused eyes.
her frail hands holding her best shoes.

Published in The Eckleburg Project, Volume 5 Issue 2