Hayes Shoes: closed these thirty years
by John P. Kristofco


they left it all one day,
pulled the gate across the door
and left along the street where once
the people came in colors, in the sun
that drew them up like April
til the sultry breath of industry
seduced them all to slumber,
and they woke to steel dust,
rust along the remnants of their bones
broken like the glass behind those barriers,
staring where their hearts had walked away,
drifting in their tattered shoes,
the fading shadows of their shattered souls






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