Monday, August 26, 2024

white sneakers. Feb 20, 2014

  

I find the pair of white sneakers

in the back of my closet

worn once then abandoned

because she said I look like

an old man wearing them

 I am old

old enough to be her father

a real bit of Oedipus in that sense

 I also want to fuck her

and so as Father figure

 full of lust for my would be daughter

 I stash the sneaker in the closet

 and do the best to forget

 they're there

 a haunting presence

 the ghost I imagined in the closet growing up

waiting to leap out at me

full of teeth and claws

Time’s Unwanted Chariot

dragging me to the eventual Doom

 while the sneakers stir under dress shoes

 and old garments that slipped off hangers

a not so elaborate striptease

I always imagined her doing

 those long nights long ago

when we texted each other in the dark

white shoes for an old man

 with pretensions of being young

 lusting after his offspring

the way all men young or old do

 but most of all for he, I think

as I take them the shoes out to the trash bin


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