Without his shoes he can freely experience being an object, being molded by the slobbering city dirt sweltering in the summer’s heat. And the frowns are laurel leaves crowning his resistance. Consumption is unfeeling. The more he feels the ground dig fragments into callouses. 

But they don’t belong to him, the callouses.

They grew in the absence of her body. On all 150 pairs of shoes she left. A pair for each occasion, three flavors of dignity for every day. All in best condition, keeping her unchanged. She kept them clean.

As if they had never seen the pavement.

Inspired by Doris Salcedo’s ‘Atrabiliarios‘