Shoes

'They look like my size.'
We're walking fast, early morning in Edinburgh, street sweepers at work, hunched over crumbs of last night's revelry.
We've just said goodbye to Nikita and it's too early for coffee. So we just walk, tickled at times by stiff tendrils of sun.
The shoes, abandoned on a pavement, look like a punctuation mark at the end of something that happened during the night. High, elegant, pathetic.
We walk past one, hold our breath for five steps. Then spot the other shoe behind a telephone booth, on its side and pointing west.
'They look like my size.'
All the time wondering: were they too small for the previous owner? Was she too drunk to notice they weren't on her feet any longer? Did she throw them at a cheating lover? Did she drop them in the middle of a kiss?
In the meantime, the man has left my side. He walks back, picking shoes.
The cafe is open now.
I'll try them on later.