The store that sold my red girl shoes
was across from the dentist who didn’t use Novacaine,
who shoved my mouth open and tugged
at my problem teeth, then offered me suckers
in primary colors while my mother pulled coins
from the bottom of her purse.
The shoes were corrective. I don’t know
what was wrong with my feet, didn’t understand
why I couldn’t have single buckle black patent leather.
The red was oxblood, a word I understood
though I’d never seen an ox or the smear
of brown-red on underwear, knew only blood
thin as a geranium petal from flesh freshly nicked.
When my mother looked down at my deeply red feet
she saw my difference and what she and her other kids
couldn’t have—bags of pink-red pistachios, quarts
of black-red cherries, red velvet cake slices asleep
on paper doilies, a new coral-red lipstick named Fire
and Ice. The shoes were stiff as the arms she wouldn’t curl
around me and my deformities. I need to believe
each of her sacrifices made me able to run.
