My father always wore shoes around the house. 

My mother took them off the second she walked through the door. 

As a child I joked their marriage ended because of their differences with footwear. 

Looking back I wasn’t entirely wrong. 

Dad and Mom differed in the way a tornado and a hurricane do. 

Mom as a child evaded and hopped over broken shards. 

Dad learned to jump on items made of glass before they could undo him.

I would say my mother is proactive, my father reactive. 

But dad always wears shoes and mom doesn’t. 

My sister takes off her shoes yet she still jumps on glass. 

I watch her get the pieces lodged in the soles of her feet, simply because she can. 

We call her a bull, a steam engine, a beast. 

She is a mechanism of destruction. 

If faced with enigma she would break it using brute force. 

I was taught to tap-dance at a young age. 

My feet always appeared graceful in their lace ballet shoes. 

I used to spin around my house, smiling through the pain of standing on my toes. 

I was as majestic as an angel, light as a feather. 

I gave away my shoes to let my feet sink into the sand as I learned the art of hula. 

For years I learned of the ways to evade the world with a graceful leap. 

I could spin, tiptoe away without so much as a hiss. 

I traded it all away for a pair of used cleats. 

It started with soccer, just as it had for my mother. 

Football followed for the honor of my father. 

I learned how to crush my opponents, tearing up the field as I dashed like my bullish sister. 

Brutish feelings consumed me, turning me into a combination of my parents’ force. 

Until lacrosse stole me away with its enticing individuality. 

I had never done something new before.

My cleats were no longer as destructive, my feet learning to combine force and gentility. 

I keep my shoes on when I feel it best. 

They come off as soon as my comfort’s desired call for them to.

I step on glass, sometimes with the bares of my feet, sometimes with the soles of my shoes. 

I evade glass, regardless of if something covers my feet or not. 

My sister is a brute who crushes all no matter what. 

I am timid, sometimes destroying and sometimes avoiding. 

We took the habits of our parents and combined them. 

Even as I crush glass with my bare feet, Dad says I’m so much like him. 

But he leaves his shoes on. 

Even as I evade the shards with tiptoes and shoes, Mom claims I’m her twin. 

But she always kicks her shoes off.