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?”
