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DREAMING OF A PAIR OF SHOES

Yesterday, I dreamt of a really nice pair of shoes.
It was the one I’ve been eyeing to buy some weeks back.
To my surprise, it’s there resting underneath my bed. It’s positioned exactly the way it was displayed on the rack at the shoe store – enticing and costly.

My mother walked into the room as I pick it up holding it in a way that the pair doesn’t get separated. It was a pair of black suede shoes whose front part, which resembles a ribbon, covers the middle part of one’s set of toes, leaving the nails exposed. Inside, where the rear part of one’s foot rests, is a print that carries the expensive name of its brand. It’s got this flat hard rubber sole that’s pale gold in color.

Truly it wasn’t like Cinderella’s glass shoes but damn, it looked perfect.

Not long after that the pair escaped my grip and excited as I was, I tried it on. My feet made their way to a gentle entrance - almost trembling. The footwear fit my petite feet perfectly well. It felt very smooth against my skin. It flattered my nails which at that moment were newly polished. I was in seventh-heaven is an understatement.

But just like an ordinary dream where situations go swirling uncertain and clouds blur your sight giving you a hint that what’s happening is not true, I found myself holding the same pair of shoes in my hands and my mother not in sight. As if I were two persons, I watched myself scrunch my nose and grit my teeth in disappointment as I look at it, scratched and blemished with what seemed to be bites of a crazy dog. It broke my heart immensely. There in my hands is my only fantasy, and as fast as I was able to realize it, it’s worn out -broken to a point of it no longer useable. I cursed the culprit bitch, wished that the same fate would happen to her, and burst into tears.

Tears that probably amounted to the sum of tears you lose when you lose your first love, that I woke up with my eyes drenched and the sound of a whimper from a far away land, as distant as dreamland. (How far is it? I used to think it was just right under my pillow.)

For a moment, I was clueless. Then, in between sobs, the vision flashed before me. And like in a trance, I drooped under my bed and almost in panic looked for the pair of shoes. I held my chest as I felt my heart crashing inside it. It’s gone. Permanently.

I cried one more time as I realized I was crying for a pair of shoes I never really had.

February 7th, 2007

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