My momma always said she knew it was me coming down the stairs
by the way my footsteps shook the dinner plates
stacked neatly
on the counter.
My sister stepped softly,
and my brother too slow, but I
came down the stairs like a crumbling building:
too big too loud and all
at once
shaking the little blue flowers
painted on the ceramic rims.
You got feet like skis,
My grandmother said as I slipped off my tevas.
Nothin’ could keep you from coming down the mountain.
I nodded,
wishing for toes like rosebuds tucked
into ballet slippers
and the balance to wear heels to middle school dances,
where boys liked the girls with pretty shoes,
and ignored those that teetered like fawns
newborn in their mother’s mascara
leaving them desperate and wobbling
against the peach walls of the bathroom,
clinging to the sink basin
to keep them steady.
I found my first pair of boots
buried behind some loafers at a yard sale.
They were only six dollars and I
changed right there on the lawn, their eyelets
winking as the wet grass
soaked the hem of my overalls,
darkening the cross-hatch stitch of the denim.
The boots were black with yellow laces, and stiff
against my ankles—the type of support I thought
only another person could give me.
Later that night I traced the blisters that sprouted
like radishes along my heel,
flinching but not minding because these boots had soles
as thick as my wrist
and it felt right to take a step and know
that nothing could
penetrate the bottom.
It took three years to see another woman
with feet like mine.
She came into the hardware store and bought three pallets of bricks.
Her shirt was tucked and her hair cropped short,
and I wanted to tell her she was beautiful
with her chapped elbows, callused hands,
and familiar yellow laces wrapped twice
around her ankles.
You see, women like us aren’t often seen as beautiful,
but the way she flicked her wallet
out of her back pocket,
laughed with both hands on the counter,
and asked for track bolts
without saying sorry,
I knew in my belly
the necessity of her shoulders, that her voice
could have filled jelly jars,
and as I watched her leave
I counted her steps:
left, then right,
left, then right,
each one louder
than the next.