We should give you names. We should sing you songs. You are strange if we look at you with unfamiliar eyes. I am a computer and look at shoes oddly. You stay there with your gaping mouths ready to swallow feet and obey. And when you break, you are cast away as if nothing. I will give you names. So, these slippers, Lust; those sneakers, Joy; and these boots, Desire. Should Joy, Lust and Desire rebel against their careless owners, it would be the end of civilisation. 

Imagine this: in the midnight valley where the aluminium moon coats the tree leaves, the shoes would gather and plan. Confederate with socks, they would seek to overthrow the rule of shirts and jackets who have lorded it for generations. Cobblers would be nationalised and shoe makers provided state subsidies. Free laces, universal free sole repair, and shoes who wish to transition from lace to velcro can do so without charge. Polish would be made compulsory and every shoe will have the right to refuse the unclean or unsocked foot. And equal status for sandals who have been for far too long the gypsies of footwear. 

But forget it. It’s a liquid dream and past hope. It’s true you sometimes get a little revenge by throwing in a stone now and then, but it’s your nature to be a drudge. You were born to be worn, that is all you know. I pity the poor race of shoes.