RED SHOES

They will say you wore red shoes. They’ll smile as they say it, misty-eyed and giddy in the memory of you – the you they remember, not the one you were, for you had blue shoes. But no, not anymore, you wore red shoes, and they’ll all agree on it. And that, my friend, is that. Truth dies with the witness.

Because once you’re gone, the version of you that you knew, the one with all the contradictions and complexities, the secret fears, and carefully chosen lies, that version evaporates like morning mist under the oppressiveness of day. Gone, – your inner theatre, your curated identity, the intricate character you created and played in your own mind – none of it mattered, not anymore. That person? Never existed, not really.

But no, you’ll stand proud and declare “I don’t care what anyone thinks about me”, sometimes even conflictingly unprompted.

All I’m saying is if you don’t… you probably should, and if you insist that you don’t, then you already do.

You think you are what you are? No, you are what’s left of you in someone else’s head. And once they’re gone too, then not even that remains. You were an echo, a pop in the static, forgotten, then never-was.

“Do you think I’m good?” he asked.

“At what?” she asked.

“At being me” he said.

“Well, no one else wants the job” she said.

Because when memory becomes fiction, fiction becomes reality. And the reality of you, posthumously, is whatever survives in their myth. If they remember you as funny, you were funny. If they remember you cruel, well then, weren’t you? Because the courtroom is closed now, and the verdict is tattooed in recollection.

What matters is how you’re remembered. Because how you’re remembered is not what they think you are, it is what you are, or, well, was. Not the nuanced, cluttered tangle of your thoughts, but their abridged version of you. Sanitised, simplified, packaged into anecdotes, quirks, the one thing you “always used to say.”

You become a character in someone else’s head, a story. But here lays the next dilemma!

Do you even exist – now that you’re reduced to dialogue and traits, what are you compared to someone like Sherlock Holmes?

You’re dead, he never lived, yet both of you walk the streets of memory in someone else’s mind, echoing through actions, phrases, perhaps even habits. Fictional, factual – what does it matter, if the effect is the same? There is no observable distinction between a half forgotten real person and a half remembered imaginary one.

You are a narrative now, like a phantom of recollection, a footnote whispered over drinks, and every time you’re remembered, it is not you they speak of, but the character they cast you as.

And just like that, you’re someone else’s story now, and not only are they quoting you incorrectly, you now wore red shoes.