A slipper washed ashore one day as I walked along your favorite surf spot, mottled blue and green, one leg ripped from its hole, wriggling in the incoming and outgoing waves, reminding me of the days I had forgotten which one was mine, slipping yours on by mistake, the screen door slamming behind me, realizing too late that it was too big even for my walk on water feet, flip flapping my way to school up the hill, too lazy and too late to run back home and get my own, my feet a mismatched black and blue and green, knowing I would be teased and mocked on the playground look at dat hamajang slippahs as I jutted my legs to the sky on the swings, in class ho lolo why your slippahs stay messed up as I sat cross legged on the floor during reading time, at lunch no come eat by us as girls with perfect hair, ruffled blouses and slim jeans laughed behind their perfect hands, knowing it would be better to just walk barefoot and risk detention and being teased for being poor, but deciding that I liked how big yours were, my brown toes fanned in your blue and green space, wondering if you realized I had taken one of them when you left for school, or the beach, or where ever you went when you weren’t home, and I watch the slipper get pulled back out, floating over cresting waves, and wish I could slip my feet back in one more time, knowing that my feet would fit perfectly, my brown toes, finally filling in the space.
Melissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer living in Japan, has work published and forthcoming in The Rumpus, Fractured Lit, Flash Frog, Gigantic Sequins, Cream City Review, Cincinnati Review miCRo, Indiana Review, The ASP Bulletin, Craft, swamp pink, Pinch, Moon City Review and The Threepenny Review, and honored in Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions, and Wigleaf Top 50. Read Hard Skin from Juventud Press and Kahi and Lua from Alien Buddha. She tweets @lumchanmfa and talks story at melissallanesbrownlee.com.
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