High Heels (Poetry)

Nineteen fifties peeptoe courts
summer-white and not much worn
she let me have them for a game
of dressing-up. I wasn’t more

than five or six — my feet were small
and how I walked and kept them on’s
a mystery but with a friend
we clip-clopped up and down the street

imagining ourselves full-grown
in borrowed skirts and scarves and hats
old handbags stuffed with who-knows-what
unsteady in our mothers’ shoes.

A practice run for times to come —
our own stilettos adding height
to teenage hopes the winner might
live their dream and rule the world.