BLACK SANDALS

Micro Memoir

I bend over to adjust the strap of my new black sandal away from the sensitive scab on the heel of my right foot, aware that the minister is moving towards the podium and in just a moment all the eyes in the room will be boring into the backs of our heads: myself, my children, my mother-in-law. I wiggle two fingers between the strap and my skin, feel the stickiness of blood. I will need to tend to it later. For now, I sit back against the velour loveseat and focus on the casket.

My husband’s. 

I am bleeding again, a broken blister gained from a pair of old sandals worn at the beach last Saturday. My daughter inspected the injury with concern.

“It’ll take a while to heal,” she said. “You need new sandals. You need to do something for yourself once in a while. It can’t always be about Dad.” She doctored the wound with iodine and bandaids purchased at a boardwalk bodega, new black sandals on my feet and the old ones thrown into a seaside trash can. And later, when the wound began to bleed again outside of Smyrna, she ran into a Valvoline Station for more medical supplies. 

Not knowing, either of us, a much larger wound waited at home.

Not knowing that those very sandals, purchased in haste, would still be causing me to bleed. 

Not knowing how long it would take for the wound to heal.