Mermaid Slippers

Please send me your last pair of shoes,
worn out with dancing
as you mentioned in your letter,
so that I might have something
to press against my heart.

-Goethe

I know mermaids don’t wear slippers;

those are the words that float in my mind

when I see these sorts of shells.

And then, unbidden, Lewis Carroll’s Lobster Quadrille;

“will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?”