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I Lost My Favorite Shoes
by
Elizabeth Harrington

My black strappy sandals with the two-inch heels--
The ones I wore in Paris, clicking onto Rue d’Etoile
in a light rain;

The ones I wore on 6th Avenue, when I linked arms with him
before he disappeared
down a dark flight of stairs
at the Iridium.

When I slipped them on, I was someone else.
When I walked in them, I was the snap
of white tablecloth at a sidewalk café.

They have never seen inside a hospital. Or the ICU

where there are no windows
and the light is always on—

as if it were a gambling casino
or interrogation room.

If my shoes were religious, they’d genuflect.
If they could talk, they’d say “save me.”

From The Quick and the Dead (Grayson Books, 2010).
Used here with the author's permission.

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Elizabeth Harrington’s poems have appeared in The Hudson Review, Field, Connecticut Review, and other journals, as well as in an anthology about divorce. She was a winner of the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award and second place winner in The Ledge Poetry Contest. Her chapbook, Earth’s Milk, (2007) was first runner-up in the Main Street Rag Chapbook Poetry contest. Another chapbook, The Quick and the Dead, took first prize in the 2010 Grayson Books competition. Elizabeth has a Ph.D. in psychology and recently started Harrington Research Associates, a market research consulting company. Elizabeth and her black cat live in Tarrytown, New York, where she hikes in the Rockefeller Preserve, does yoga, and writes articles about poetry at www.suite101.com. Learn more about her at www.eharringtonwrites.com.

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