The Red Shoes / Anne Sexton

 

The Red Shoes

Anne Sexton

I stand in the ring

in the dead city

and tie on the red shoes.

Everything that was calm

is mine, the watch with an ant walking,

the toes, lined up like dogs,

the stove long before it boils toads,

the parlor, white in winter, long before flies,

the doe lying down on moss, long before the bullet.

I tie on the red shoes.

They are not mine.

They are my mother’s.

Her mother’s before.

Handed down like an heirloom

but hidden like shameful letters.

The house and the street where they belong

are hidden and all the women, too,

are hidden.

All those girls

who wore the red shoes,

each boarded a train that would not stop.

Stations flew by like suitors and would not stop.

They all danced like trout on the hook.

They were played with.

They tore off their ears like safety pins.

Their arms fell off them and became hats.

Their heads rolled off and sang down the street.

And their feet – oh God, their feet in the market place –

their feet, those two beetles, ran for the corner