They sat side by side by the door, two little empty boats pointed the same way, and I slipped my fingers into one and found it still warm, still shaped like the foot that just left it, a hollow holding the ghost of a heel. I rocked it. It fell over. The humans keep these by every door, dozens of them, mouths open, tongues out, waiting.
I have never understood waiting. I move; the loose things move with me; the leaf lets go and comes, the door bangs, the smell of someone's dinner three streets over rides across a whole neighborhood on my back and no one thanks me. But these stay. Faithful, patient, laced tight all day around a body and then set down and abandoned in a row, still faintly sour with the road, and they do not follow.
I lifted a shoelace to see if it would come with me. It rose, it fluttered, it dropped. It belongs to the shoe. The shoe belongs to the foot. The foot belongs to the human, who belongs to the house, who belongs to the hill, all of them holding each other in place while I pour through the gap under the door.
I carried off a little of the warmth, the way I carry everything, without asking. Somewhere south of here I am already setting down the smell of that leather over a field it will never walk, and I have forgotten the door, the row, the two open mouths, the way they pointed so certainly at a somewhere I passed through hours ago and could not for my life tell you the name of.