Friday poem (repost)

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The Young Woman Who Lived in a Shoe

I was her first, clearly unplanned,

my mother so young.

Brothers and sisters followed soon,

more and more of them,

as common as seasons.

When our mother

ran out of proper names for them

she used colors,

and when those began to blur

new babies were called flowers

and then minerals.

Our father, overwhelmed, moved out.

He has a new family,

a boy and a girl,

the four of them safe

in sturdy white buck and cleat.

The rest of us remained,

our house crowded and

low-heeled but warm,

and for a while we were happy

until our old house began to

crowd in the toe,

and the stitching to fail.

Two of our sisters, teens by then,

seeped away, street grime scraping the

pink glitter from their sneakers.

Five brothers joined the Army

and live steel-toed,

sure of themselves and their guns

Our mother began

to mistake those of us left behind

for each other

and then for herself.

I cared for the rest of my brothers and sisters

the best I could.

I lined our insole with pasteboard

and sewed the edges of the tongue to keep out the rain.

But one by one they left us here,

just our mother and me.

They live far away,

in surburban brogans,

Oxfords with spacious lofts,

waders with an ocean view.

And now it's just the two of us,

and I don't know what to do.