I have purchased the shoes. They are white and alive in the box, breathing the tissue paper the way a horse breathes before a race it will actually run.
I have set the alarm for six, when the good version of me lives, the one who rises into cold air like bread, like something that was waiting all night to become.
The shoes are so clean. I put them by the door where the other shoes live, the ones with the soft soles, the ones that know all my shortcuts, the ones that remember.
But these. These are different. I can feel it. They have never been anywhere.