Those Red Sneakers

I am those red sneakers with polka dotted laces so old that feet shouldn't wear them but I can't throw them out because they remember when red converse sneakers were still made in the USA and not overseas in some dragon of a factory where tiny underpaid hands worked for hours for me, or us, and dreamt of some pot of gold at the end of an 80-hour workweek rainbow myth.

These shoes used to, like a lot of things, come from somewhere in my backyard, beside the flowers whose names I know and whose garden's smell I can remember even when I'm not there or haven't been there for years, the years these red sneakers have seen me through, from my room to the mountains to down home and away, overseas, overrun and nomadic, a twenty-something stealing through worlds in red sneakers, polka dotted laces, through shifting opinions to this.

And I remember when I bought those red ones, at the shoe store downtown, the man in the green shirt smiled and said, "This is our last pair still made in the USA. Nike bought Converse and now they're making them in China." He said cheaper, most likely, more profitable. And even though the rubber on the toes didn't line up quite right they were red, and I bought them, and they brought me here.