I didn't notice my neighbor until I caught her wearing a pair of red shoes. I live down the hall and don't dare to wear my own red shoes anymore. I see her red shoes often now, almost every day in fact. She wears them with the cruel disregard of a bird taking over another's nest, leaving no room for what used to exist in her place. They are an unrulier shade of red than mine; they have the bite of the flesh of a blood orange while mine are a pair of overripe, softly bruised cherries. I've had mine for many years, ever since a lost friend's wedding, and they used to kindle in me some soft feeling, a pleasant opposite of pride. Now their sight offends me, and I pretend to have forgotten where I've hid them from myself.

Some days I think of the long-ago wedding: being made to stand in a neat row and to wear identical red shoes under identical dust-colored gowns, two tall steps below the bride, like uniformed schoolgirls each waiting in vain for her name to be called. On those days I hate my neighbor's red shoes, and I want to steal them and bake them in the oven and only open the door when they've charred black, or maybe never. Other times I feel in love with the shoes, and on those days I lie on top of my bed and fantasize about stealing the shoes and wearing them every day, never taking them off until I've grown them onto my body, trained them to be a part of me. I would stay inside forever, safe and alone with my secret. And there are days when I'm sure I've fallen in love with my neighbor, and I imagine peeling those shoes off her feet and throwing them hard under the bed never to be looked at again, keeping only the neighbor for myself. But those times are rare and brief, and I soon turn my mind back to the shoes.

My neighbor wears a kind face when we cross paths in the dim hallway, down by the letter slots, on the blind curve of stairs. Time ravels around itself; anger and hunger become indistinguishable. She keeps her eyes on me for long moments, and we watch each other as through a window, or the bars of a cage. She smiles and her teeth are the bones of stars, bright and picked clean and too far away to possibly be real.

I've kept the dress, and every year on the anniversary of the wedding I sway myself in it through my silent rooms, barefoot and with all my lights turned on, and in the bright dining room I keep clean in case an old friend should ever come by unannounced I dance around the too-big table and then, grabbing greedy handfuls of fabric to pull up and away from me, I step onto a chair and then the table, and up here I dance a wilder dance, stomping my feet and throwing my limbs at the far-away ceiling, and I think there is no way they've ever done anything even remotely so outrageous, and I bare my teeth in a careless laugh as I jab at the pain of comparison and wish that for just one night I were the only one dancing in the world.

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Detail of photo on main page courtesy of katsrcool.





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