We put pair after pair of her shoes into
great garbage bags, some for donation, some
bound for the Place Where Old Shoes go,

but some I could not quite bear to release—
the dyed-to-match pink linen pumps
that accompanied the fuchsia sheath

with row after row of matching fringe that
she wore with one of her quartets. As she
sang, the fringe shimmied, which my sister

and I loved. Our mother had a thing for bling—
the gaudy, the sparkle, the glitzy
(“a girl can never have too much glitter”),

which we shunned. No sequins or bedazzling
for us. So why, then, could I not let go of her
sparkly silver slip-ons, the last shoes

she wore for months before her departure?
I’ll never wear them. They’re much too
small for me, not my style and worn

to the point of discarding rather than
donating. But my sister put them aside,
and I brought them home, wishing

they’d been bright red, so that, in the end,
she might have clicked her heels together
like the other Dorothy in her ruby slippers,

no-place-like home-ing her way into
whatever comes next—with luck, the
sparkle and glimmer of the cosmos,

eager to embrace and receive her.