Solemates

I collect
those lost shoes
on the side of the highway.
I keep them
under my bed 
and in my closet.
I line them up
with no space
left for their missing partners.
I tie their laces
and zip their zippers
making them look their best
so that they will
feel better about
being the shoe left behind.
I wonder where their
shoe counterparts have gone.
Did they find a better match?
A younger, hipper version of themselves?
Sometimes I imagine
That the other shoes 
are traveling on back roads
looking for their lost sole mates
crying out in the wilderness
Nike, my beloved, where are you?
And yet in all my wanderings
and shoe collecting
I have never found
a matching pair.

© Natasha Chartres