shoes

By Vaishnavi Kolluru

i walk
my feet on the pavement, blackened
not a dusty caligine;
the polished obsidian 
of the school shoes
that we don’t wear at home.
click
	click
		click
my feet sever from home.

i walk
my clean feet bare on the tiles of my house
the white marks reminiscent of shoe-straps
but that is no longer a concern,
for a few
	thump
		thump
			thumps
and my feet come home.

Vaishnavi Kolluru is a sixteen-year-old writer from California. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Cathartic Lit, Otoliths Lit, Down in the Dirt Lit, Trash to Treasure Lit, and Little Old Lady Comedy. She experiments with her STEM writing side in her science blog, SixFootScience.com.