The Sound of Empty Shoes

By Shaheer

I never knew silence could sound like footsteps.

When my father passed away, he left behind a pair of old leather shoes—brown, cracked at the edges, polished so many times the shine had become part of their skin. They sat by the front door for weeks after the funeral, like they were still waiting for him to come home. Sometimes, when I walked past, I’d swear they shifted slightly, as though nudged by some invisible foot. But no one dared move them. Not even my mother.

They became a part of the hallway, like a memory turned into furniture. We walked around them, dusted near them, but never touched. The shoes outlived his scent, his voice, even the echo of his laugh in the kitchen. Still, they stayed there, stubborn and quiet, like him.

I was seventeen then. Old enough to understand grief, but young enough to think it had a timeline. I thought we’d cry, have a funeral, eat meals in awkward silence for a few weeks, and then move on. But grief doesn’t listen to calendars. It doesn’t tick like a clock. It sits inside you, still, until something stirs it.

For me, that stirring came from my little sister, Mara.

One afternoon, I caught her sitting on the floor near the shoes. She was lacing them up. They were enormous on her—she was ten—but she didn’t care. She stood, shuffled forward, her small frame almost comic in those heavy shoes.

“What are you doing?” I asked, maybe too harshly.

She looked up, guilty but not ashamed. “Just walking.”

“In Dad’s shoes?”

She nodded. “It feels like he’s walking with me.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. Because I understood her in that moment more than anyone else had since the day he died.

The next morning, the shoes were gone from the hallway. I thought maybe my mother had finally packed them away, but when I opened the back door, I saw them—muddy, scuffed, abandoned on the back step.

Mara had worn them again.

That night, I took the shoes to my room.

I stared at them for a long time, fingers tracing the seams, the worn-out soles, the little scratches he used to polish out every Sunday morning before church. Then, carefully, like I was trespassing, I slipped them on.

They fit.

Not perfectly, but enough.

The weight surprised me. They were heavier than they looked, not just from leather and sole, but from memory. I took a step. Then another. The floor creaked under me, familiar and strange all at once. I didn’t cry, but something inside me cracked open, like a window long stuck shut.

That night, I dreamed of my father.

We didn’t speak. We just walked—through a forest bathed in golden light, the kind you only see in autumn or old photographs. He was beside me, just a silhouette, his face blurred, like the memory of a voice you’re afraid to forget. But the sound of our footsteps was clear. His shoes, my shoes—together again.

From then on, I wore the shoes sometimes. Not every day. Just on the days I needed him.

Before my first job interview.

When I drove alone for the first time.

When I visited his grave on his birthday.

The shoes became something more than his. They became a bridge. A way of saying, “You’re still with me.” And somehow, that made it easier to move forward.

Years passed.

I moved out. Went to university. Then to a small apartment with too much rent and too little sunlight. I still brought the shoes with me. They stayed in my closet, not by the door, but close enough that I could reach for them when the world got too loud, too uncertain.

Then, one spring morning, I got a call from Mom.

“Mara graduated yesterday,” she said.

I smiled. “I know. She sent me pictures.”

“She wore them,” she added after a pause.

“The shoes?”

A breath. “Yes. Your dad’s.”

I was quiet for a moment. Not because I was surprised—but because it made perfect sense. The shoes had walked her through something too.

They weren’t just his anymore.

They were ours.

Passed down like a story, chapter by chapter, sole by sole. Not polished, not perfect, but worn in the best ways—by love, by time, by memory.

Now, they sit by my own door. I have a daughter of my own. She’s small, curious, always asking questions.

One day she pointed at them and asked, “Whose are those?”

I smiled.

“They belonged to someone who loved to walk beside the people he loved.”

She touched them gently. “Can I try them?”

“Not yet,” I said. “One day.”

And maybe, when she’s ready, she’ll walk in them too.

Because some footsteps never really fade.

They just find new paths to echo through.