I hold them at two small places now, the flat of each foot pressed against the ground, and through the shoes I hold the person above them. I have always liked the ones who wear shoes. It means they feel me a little, feel that I insist on the ground, and they have built a soft argument to place between us. I do not mind the argument. I still reach through.
There are two of them by the door tonight, empty, tipped slightly toward each other, laces gone slack. I hold them exactly as I held them when they were full: the same faithful pull downward, the same waiting. Empty or full, my grip does not change. The person does not know this. The person thinks the shoes only matter when worn.
Earlier the person stood in them for a long time in the kitchen and did not move and said, quietly, that they were carrying too much lately. I checked. I checked carefully, the way I check everything. The shoes weighed what shoes weigh. The person weighed what the person weighs.
There was nothing extra on them, nothing I could feel, and yet I watched the shoulders come down toward me, slow, the whole body leaning into the floor as though something enormous had been set on top of it. I could not find the something. I held it anyway. I hold everything, named or not.
Now the shoes are still and the person is asleep upstairs, gone entirely limp, trusting me completely, which is the only thing I have ever asked. In the morning they will step back into the shoes and think the shoes are what keeps them on the ground.
It was me. It was always me.
I have not once put you down.