We Underestimate Home Slippers

You know what?

We underestimate home slippers.
We call them small things and everyday things and sometimes nothing at all.
But still they remain, patiently, unassuming, at the foot of my bed.
They know my first step each morning will be toward them.

I did not buy them with ceremony. I did not photograph them.
They arrive into our lives almost invisibly, slipped into a bag or a box,
chosen because they were on sale,
a colour that seemed “fine enough.”

And yet, they learn the shape of me.
They remember the bend of my toes, the press of my heels.
They forgive my hurried exits,
My spilling tea, the way my right heel drags slightly more than the left

I think about how slippers teach us a love sans performance,
a love that’s never asked to be displayed,
a love that can take the wear and still stay soft.

In them, there is no sharpness,
no straight lines to unlearn later,
just a patient giving in to the curve of our foot,
the way the fabric sags into us,
the way we sag into them.

And maybe that’s why I forget they are there,
because they are doing their job perfectly.
Because love, when it is whole,
makes itself a part of the floor we stand on without askance,

even once we're gone.