He
wears the same Chuck Taylor every day. People aren’t aware of this: a veridical
detail about someone hovering in a sky of possibilities where nobody dares to
look up and nobody cares to. The truth is: everyone’s just too busy or too
lunatic, walking past people whom they might dream the next night after, and
when they wake up, everything is either just a faded frame or a picture
forgotten completely. After all, they’re just gonna rub their eyes and the
sleep away, make their beds, do the same routine, and right after they lace
their shoes and wear their best grins, they fall to the same process the next
second.
Just
like everyone else.
He
wonders how it feels to wear someone else’s shoes. Do people ask the same? Just
like the twinge, does it hurt? Does lacing the ties in a different way
make it any different? That’s why he tries. Occasionally, it doesn’t feel
anything like it, something he’s never experienced, while sometimes, it’s too familiar
he’d assume it’s his pair. Few fit him. Sometimes, they hurt, rubbing against
his skin and the blisters only round up half what the owner feels. He’d only be
aware how it hurts, but he wouldn’t even understand half the way it actually
was. He’d wear another again and another, and just then he would notice that
most of the time, it feels better—better than his pair. Yet nobody knows this;
a habit developed in years taking pictures of people’s shoes clattering against
the streets and hallways and stairwells, and for him, shoes are just tiny proofs
of untold stories waiting to be written; they show distance and places and
emotions in all forms, dragged, tucked and laced. But then, even the pictures
show how people walk past people, ignoring, avoiding each other’s glances. Not
that they hate them, you know, we just
do.
We’re
good at eluding people and ask why nobody talks to us. People wear different
shoes to match whatever jeans or dress, when in fact, people only appreciate it
less than half the way you expect they would. It’s just another small shade of
truth.
He
wears the same shoes every day—same old laces—same old tightness; it’s a
witness that could define him from the tiniest detail to the most obscure way
possible, yet nobody would ever know. His shoes tell so much about him, tucked both
behind his lips and knotted to the tightness of his laces—words grazing his
identity—steps keeping his pace. He doesn’t walk so fast, but he walks faster
than anyone else on the street, in three steps per second, catching everyone in
short intersections. When you think about it, everyone’s too busy, grazed with
rush to even notice everyone’s steps clatter against the pavement, yet alone
understand how they feel wearing them. After all, we will only understand
someone when we get to experience what they’ve been through.
Till
then, we will never notice.
He
wears the same shoes every day, but even if it fits, it hurts.
