Wearing The Wrong Shoes Poem by Maya Hanson

You tell me this place is welcoming
this place is like a quiet haven in the woods no one knows about
You tell me I'm just wearing the wrong shoes
but how can that be
when every so often I find myself
alone in a closet again,
waiting on some hero to come bang down the door
just so I can have some semblance of freedom?

Of course there's no hero here
there's only these legs
that keep stumbling and somehow they stay upright and
until now no matter how far I've pushed my muscles
they don't snap
they get stronger with every step
so I leave the closet and slam the door behind me.

But once I'm out I keep tripping over nails and two-by-fours
that jut out of the walls
taking up space in your brain I should occupy,
and tearing up these shoes I've used to explore your hallway for so long,
pulling blood out of my body
but I swear it's not your fault
it's just the treacherous slope you're making me tread-
I should wear better shoes.

I should be more cautious
trying to figure you out
in this volatile maze of a mind
I should step silently
around the nails and debris
to keep you from screaming.

But it's not worth it
I can't count the nails before I'm upon them,
I've been through too much on this floor
to throw away the battle scars

So I run down your hallway
in broken shoes
I don't need to walk on sharp steel like it's eggshells
I don't need to find safety
I need to find the fire alarm
and then I need to find the door
and get past the fence and the driveway you keep a parked car in to keep me a mile from home
but trust me, in these broken shoes I can get farther than you and your clenched-tight fists and lonely narrowed eyes can even dream about
That's okay, I can ruin these shoes
because once I escape
I have all the time in the world
to build myself a new pair of shoes
and go sprinting down the airplane runway
until I finally take flight.