Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

Ruby Slippers
in memory of Richard Hunt
I’m not looking for ruby slippers
when I dart into The Stolen Heart—the only
decent gift and home decor shop in our small
midwest town—searching for a valentine
to send a friend in England. But there
they are, perched on the padded edge
of a vintage jewel box, their rhinestone
bows sparkling with stars the size of sequins.
They are shiny and red as apples on the outside,
red as I imagine rubies must really be, painted
with the kind of enamel that shimmers
underneath, as if glitter were frozen
then polished to a sheen. And they’re gold
inside, as if made for fairies’ feet, not
some girl from Kansas. Or a woman like me,
stuck somewhere in the middle of my life
and worn down this gray January day
by the effort of holding melancholy at bay.
But there they are, real as my own hand,
picking them up and turning them over.
No price, so I walk to the front of the shop
to ask, not meaning to tell the owner
the story of you, my dead writer friend—
how I was Dorothy and you were Oz, my words
and secrets safer with you than God, the work
of finding a way back home our perennial subject—
my public reserve broken by these small shoes
that seem to have tumbled from the sky to my hand,
which the shopkeeper folds my fingers around,
explaining that the shoes were once really a pin,
whose tiny clasp has broken. And I think,
she says, smiling, you should have them for free,
192 ◆ Crab Orchard Review
Alison Townsend