You flipped your flops until they were almost fictional, the stuff of legends. A beautiful memory, exhaling its last.

They were the ones you walked along the beach in. They’d been filled with hopes and sand and ocean, the visions of a lifetime. Bondi Beach, eat your heart out. There was still so much sunshine trapped in the last little layer of decomposing rubber, that see through sole, with such excellent views right to the core of the earth.

You flipped your flops every day with steely determination and shuffled on the soft carpet of our living room, the only surface suitable for those reluctantly clingy, almost immaterial survivors of your younger self. The notion of a student exchange and the other side of the world, still on your feet, just.

Then, one day, I heard you flip down the stairs.

I waited.

Flip.

Waited.

Flip.

Waited and saw, you had a frown on your face, for the flop would no longer follow your flip, had abandoned ship, just like that. Perhaps, it was time to let go? Say goodbye to the flimsy bit of rubber, the spectre of selves long shelved.

Their memory flips and flops on, never stops. Even now, decades later, we both still hear their warm, sunny rhythm, the visit of a friendly ghost. Never did a pair hold so much promise, so much sunshine in so little sole.

But I guess, you’re feet are much warmer now in cosy chunky knit slipper socks.