Change Blindness

I am the vendor of dizzyingly vertical heels.
Six inches, seven, or eight.
You can balance on them
But never walk. There is
No sunshine in this purchase.

These are your work shoes, girls.

You know I’ve done a good job
When the customer says, hey,
Take everything off, but leave on
Those torturous heels. With you at last horizontal,
The pressure is pulled away from the instep;
The toes no longer have to grip;
The spot at the base of the arch
Relaxes and your clumsy customer thinks
It is his talent that is soothing:

He is expertly working his way through you,

Making you the one who courageously finds relief.
In ways, he is not so wrong.

An hour later, and you are trying
To navigate on stilts again,
Trying to make of your limited locomotion
A seductive S, while your body
Works itself arid to simply not fall over.
As time spreads, you drop your price
Just to get sooner off your feet,
To get to where the blood
Will stubbornly flow back into
Anything below mid-thigh.

And for that time when the finishing trick of the day
Scurries, at last, from momentary master
To departing shadow: I have glorious
Massage sneakers, the ones with
Extended arch support and the
Toner ball serviceably behind the toes.

It will be your turn then
To fondle a little control and dominance, lose
Yourself in animal moments of comfort,
To see your feet as more than part of the product.

Look at them all you want: but to own a pair
Will cost you a lot more than you have had
To lay out for those danger-prone heels;
These are going to force you to think – when you
Feel the euphoria of their pliant response –
Of effect rather than cause,
Of how much all that time you have
With your wage-earning feet
Resting unconsciously flat on the floor
Dispassionately actually means to you.