It was built in 1965,
the children's shoe store was shaped like a shoe;
tiny door on the side that was only for kids,
a roof that sloped and the chimney was crooked.
I remember my mother took me there once.
I was four, or five.
She bought me new shoes.
Patent leather, candy apple red.
The shoes had gold buckles.
I remember they shined.
When I was a child,
the shoe-shaped store looked as big as a mountain.
It was pretty then too.
Painted light blue,
yellow flowers in front.
But after a time, the novelty faded.
They closed the doors in late ‘69.
So obvious then it had been a mistake;
a giant shoe-shaped miscalculation.
Highly impractical.
Unwanted, unused,
for years it sat like a dragon slain.
Neighborhood gangs started tagging the store.
They spray painted words, and symbols and signs
and smack in the middle,
in huge block letters, red like my shoes,
someone wrote “lumberjack”,
and “Spanish fly.”
Once, when I was in Washington state,
I saw Mount Rainier.
It was beautiful.
Cold.
Like I wanted to be.
In ‘95, the store that was shaped like a shoe came down,
and with it, the words that were painted in red.
Whatever their message.
Whatever they meant.
Each of us has our own dragons to slay.
Our own crooked chimneys and shoes we remember;
those spray painted words meant nothing to me.
But someone, somewhere, knows what they mean,
because somewhere inside we all long to be mountains.