tales for dreamers: the baby shoe
This baby shoe may have been worn and is certainly not for sale. Where did it come from? Where is its wearer now?
The baby shoe lay on the pavement like a forgotten promise. It betrayed no clues as to who and where its wearer was.
Some worried a little child may have gone missing. Abandoned, but with a pink shimmer of hope, as if it were waiting for a rescue it knew would never come. The notion sent a collective sigh of pathos among the crowd.
Some others harboured less sinister thoughts and believed the shoe may have fallen from a baby's dangling leg or out of an overflowing, shopping bag.
Some thought the child may have fallen into the sewer, or better still, leapt into it out of curiosity, one shoe left behind.
Somebody wistfully said the child may have grown up too quickly and so the shoe no longer fit.
Somebody else then asked where the other shoe was.
Truth was, it was just another baby shoe, never worn, for sale, having fallen off the truck en route from the factory of mass production to the retail shop of luxury; but no one wanted to believe something so devoid of emotion.
