My Dirty Shoes

My shoes arn’t a perfect white. They bear the traces of dirt washed away long ago by the rain. The leather is creased where my feet repeatedly flex, where my powerful toes push me onwards. In these creases the nondescript dingy brown has gathered, becoming something solid. 

I cannot clean them. There is nothing to clean. The stains are insidious. They have seeped into the very fabric my shoes. They represent something abstract, something that cannot be scraped away. Shoes get dirty. It’s a fundamental truth.