This shoe started its life is a cow. It was a part of it, maybe
On the stomach, or probably near the arse end of it all.
Like always, one would suppose. Then some man must have come over.
He would have killed the cow; maybe he shot it, or slit it's throat:
It matters not. The cow was dead, and that was that,
And then it's hide was peeled away from the muscle. Brown and white and
Scarlet. Blood coated all, until it was washed clean in a sink, and the
Diluted life ran into sewage and dust.

Then it would have been tanned. Tannin would drench the product
And it would appear discoloured and ragged. No blood remains,
At least not physically, we would have to suppose. The leather
Would be cut again, into size and shape. Rather small, for this one.
A child's size, maybe slightly smaller than average. Different pieces of
The stuff, of different size and shape, and possible different cattle,
Sewn back together, fitting perfectly, like a dismembered fingertip.

Anyway, moving swiftly onwards, this shoe must have been stacked
With it's brother or sister shoe, and many others like them. The place,
No doubt, stank of leather and polish. The shoe was spat on daily,
Rubbed with a rag covered in thick, black s*** that somehow shone it up.
Nicely bulled, an old, ragged man would compliment the young boy;
Doing it for tuppence a day. One day a family came in, for their girl,
No older than four, was growing up so quickly. She needed an extra pair.

She died quickly, anyway. They all do, in the end, when the men in Grey came.
The shoes looked grey by then, from all the running through rubble and gravel
The explosions shattering the Ghettos. The ash and dust, the clicks and clacks,
the choking rations and the deafening propaganda. They made an example, and
She was caught up in it. Her blood spilled across the shoe and her father's shoes,
Leaking into the loops, staining the tips of the laces.

A young boy found the shoes not an hour later, for he had been shoeless and
Homeless and black. He placed them over his ragged and scarred feet, and continued
To march, as did the queue he had found himself in. The train was a long way going nowhere,
And the shoe did little to no walking, though it did do a hell of a lot of standing.
When they got there there was a few steps off the train, and then more standing.
The boy found himself tattooed with a number, and then, as if to make up for all the standing,
There was walking. A lot of walking.

The shoes made their way around the camp, eating, working, running.
Blood spilled across them as the guards beat the “n***** boy.” Two lightning bolts
Whited out the world. Then one day, the shoes were taken off him, and thrown into a pile
Outside the showers. Hissssssssssssssss. A pillar of smoke rose from the towers in the
Camp. No bodies remained, except for the final two, being thrown into the oven, as if
They were nothing but slices of flesh, torn off of cattle, and thrown in the tanner.
This shoe ended its life as nothing but scraps of leather, thrown in the fire and left to burn.