The Shoe Was Already Dead When We Got There

November sixteenth.

Simone's sneaker gave up the moment we sat down to stretch. Not during the climb, not on the walk over, during the stretch. The sole peeled back from the toe like it had been waiting for the right audience, and she held it up and looked at it the way you look at something that has absolutely no business surprising you, and yet here we are.

We went in anyway. This was the third Tuesday. I did not deliberate about coming back; I just came back, the same way I showed up for the second time, which is to say I wrote it on the back of the bus pass and that was apparently that. The wall was still hard. My forearms still burned in a way that I find hard to describe to people who haven't done it, not sore exactly, more like wrung out, like something that was coiled all day finally had somewhere to go. I stayed the full session. Simone, broken shoe and all, stayed the full session.

The moment of diagnosis.

I keep trying to write the sentence that explains why I registered for this in the first place, and I keep arriving at the same non-answer: I saw the flyer, I photographed it on my phone, I showed Simone, Simone said 'that's a real thing' in her particular tone, and then I put my card in. That was the whole decision. There was no deliberating. I think the part I wanted to write about, the part the borrowed shoes were always going to be a stand-in for, is what it feels like to want something you have never tried and then just go try it without convincing yourself first. It turns out it feels like showing up on a Tuesday in shoes two sizes too wide, chalking your hands, and finding out the body already knew what to do with the wall even before the mind got there.

The shoe is, I am told, deceased. Simone has already texted me a photo of a replacement pair. The replacement pair is a size and a half too small in my opinion but I have been informed my opinion is irrelevant on this matter.

She came back. That's the whole story.