With Heavy Strides Three hundred pounds is a crushing weight to carry upon any soul. That is the harsh punishment dealt upon my soles with every footfall. Cruel though it might seem, for my part, it is done without malice, being simply the burden fate has thrust upon unlucky shoes. Yet I sense their rising resentment and I know that my innersoles have called upon dark arts to summon pebbles and twigs from the aether, exacting vengeance, punishing the innocent punisher. For there is no other explanation for the frequency with which I am beset by painful thorns in my toes and stones in my arches. Don’t they appreciate that at night (and most weekends) I lay my feet bare? Unburdening the downtrodden in my beneficent repose? Allowing them rest in their dark closet, free to lay among their leathery kin? Can they not see the kindness showered upon them by this misunderstood strider? Nay, I say, as I tweeze a vindictive sliver of glass from the ball of my foot. Sole has cut sole as soul has cut soul, but my callouses grow thicker the more I stamp upon their shards of protest. ___ 2015-07-22 #doodleslice #prosepoem

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