I have spent enough years
watching shoes
to distrust
first impressions.
A name crosses the room.
A backpack is flung against the cinderblock wall.
A water bottle leaves its damp ring
on black marley worn pale
by entrances, exits, curtain calls,
by kings, widows, lovers, murderers,
by seventeen-year-olds
who believed tragedy lived in volume
and forty-year-olds
already acquainted
with silence.
A left heel angles toward the door.
Toes tighten
inside borrowed character shoes.
Weight gathers
along the outside of the foot,
where children first discover
that laughter
and being laughed at
arrive through the same door.
Some sounds never leave the room.
They find a surface,
turn once,
and spend years
coming back
as echoes
against the wall.
There must be some reason
the body keeps records
the mind—busy with grades, groceries,
taxes, traffic, passwords, anniversaries—
files away as finished.
Some reason
the shoulders rise
even when the room remains kind.
Some reason
the jaw, faithful as a lockbox,
finds its work again
under fluorescent tubes
buzzing overhead
with the steady indifference
of state-funded buildings.
And breath—
that ancient accomplice,
that old collaborator,
that invisible scene partner
who has crossed every border
without passport, permission,
or applause—
waits.
I have watched hundreds arrive.
Some carrying scripts
already underlined.
Some carrying talent
like contraband.
Some carrying humor
loaded
in the back of the throat,
polished by repetition,
released
the instant
a silence
turns personal.
Some carrying beauty
they haven't yet noticed
in the mirror.
And every so often—
with no music,
no revelation,
no visible sign
to anyone
who has not spent
a good part of her life
watching human beings
approach themselves—
the floor receives
its full measure.
The spine remembers
its oldest mathematics.
The ribs make room.
A voice,
patient through childhood,
through manners,
through institutions,
through every careful lesson
in becoming agreeable—
hits oxygen
and catches fire.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2026
Jill Szoo Wilson 