The garage air

The garage air,

cool and still.

Beneath a tarp,

the forgotten things.

And then, those boots.

They weighed a ton,

or maybe it was just the memory.

The mud,

dried hard as clay in the deep lines

of the sole,

a geological record

of every single mile.

The leather, split and cracked

where my foot bent,

a permanent grimace.

That summer,

the sun bled into the sky

and we bled into the earth.

Every morning, the laces pulled tight,

a kind of prayer.

Every night, the same ache

crawled up the shins,

into the knees,

settled in the back.

I kicked them off then,

sometimes they landed hard

against the wall.

Now, just dust.

A quiet monument

to all that grind.

No longer fit for walking,

just for holding

the shape of a ghost,

a hollow space where my foot once was.

The exhaustion still sits,

a familiar tenant,

deep in the bones.