Shawn L. Bird

Misty’s shoes

attended graduation,

tramping up and down the stairs,

standing at the podium as

name after name was read

each biography

each list of scholarships.

Dancing  for young people,

leaping off into the unknown.

Misty’s shoes were there,

celebrating a roomful of potential

that Misty will never know.

.

.

.

A few years ago on eBay I purchased a pair of stunning black and white spectator pumps (Listen Up Harlow by John Fluevog).  While corresponding with the seller, I was told that they were her deceased sister’s shoes.  Misty had passed away from cystic fibrosis.  I was touched by the story, and wrote a character named after her into the novel I was writing at the time.  Misty loved shoes and dancing and her passions fueled her story line in Grace Awakening Myth.   (GA Myth is still in editing and revisions. Not sure that sub-plot will make the cut, actually).  Thinking about Misty while wearing her shoes at my school’s grad this week, I remembered young people I knew who passed away far too young.