There is a girl who lives on the bottom of a shoe. Your shoe.

She used to live in a house. But one by one everything she owned was moved to the recesses of your shoe until there was nothing left for her anywhere else. And so she silently settled in until she fit right into the crack shaped like an elongated diamond; the machines that fashioned the crack probably never thought someone would be living in it.

At first she balanced on the edge, weary of your peculiar deviations, but as she leaned in to contemplate the rhythm of your stride, her curiosity caught an angle and she found herself lodged into your rubbery sole.

As time passed she grew crooked and distorted, guided by the absurd, uncompromising mold. Of course, if she could see the pattern from the outside, she would have understood the twists and turns'”but being so embedded in it, she couldn't comprehend the abrupt bends.

She got caked in whatever you carelessly stepped on, tasting the dirt of wherever you ventured. Soon enough no one recognized the girl who lived on the bottom of your shoe. Not even me. Not even when your foot grazed over a puddle, which betrayed an impossible reflection.

Sometimes it wasn't so bad. Sometimes you sat on a sunny day, with your legs dangling off the edge of that rickety bench, and she could sway in the breeze and feel warm and secure and maybe even laugh at those fools who didn't understand why someone would want to live on the bottom of a shoe. But you would get anxious and leap up so abruptly, and she would plunge to the black, quaking concrete.

There's a girl who lives on the bottom of your shoe. But you don't know. You've never looked.

So there she waits, nestled in the chasm you don't even think about. Waits for you to one day stomp just hard enough so that she can fall…

Free.