Barefoot
By Leah Tieger
Your daughter asks what sound pink makes
and you think it’s the same as the sound
when you stomped on that beetle
and its insides escaped, sudden and strange.
Or the sound of her father beneath you,
less sudden but no less strange, and you wonder
if this is another thing you can scrape
off the sole of your shoe, all the places you’ve stepped,
doormats where you danced your undressing
before entering homes and temples,
climbing the stairs in Chang Mai,
the long ascent to summit, where you
removed your shoes and took a borrowed shawl
to walk with naked feet and covered shoulders,
to carry lilies and incense around a golden square.
You pressed those flowers against its walls,
lit those sticks and planted them in soil,
palmed one and carried it with you, let it burn
in your sunroom while you vacuumed spiders
out of corners, a small apocalypse you started.
A part of you goes with them, into that hose,
so what’s left of you can say it’s safe
for the pink bottoms of your daughter’s feet
and yours, tucked beneath you, in meditation.
Leah Tieger is a graduate of Bennington College and a fiction and poetry
reader for The Boiler. She hosts WordSpace’s Looped reading series in Dallas. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Gravel, Menacing Hedge, and Off
the Coast, among others.