No one knew his name.
He was a thin boy of nine, his t-shirt slightly frayed at the edges. Every afternoon, after school, he would walk past the cobbler’s shop on the high street. There he would stop, perfectly still, staring at the pair of red trainers displayed in the window. He never touched the glass, never made a sound—just watched.
One day, the shopkeeper, Mr. Higgins, stepped outside and asked, “Fancy those, do you?”
The boy looked down and murmured, “No, sir. I’m only remembering them.”
Mr. Higgins frowned.
So the boy explained, “They were just like the ones my brother had. But he’s gone now… and I don’t want to forget how they looked.”
Mr. Higgins fell quiet, his voice unsteady. That evening, he wrapped the trainers in a box and handed them to the boy—but it wasn’t just a gift.
“Every time you wear them,” he said, “remember this: brothers aren’t kept in the shoes they leave behind. They’re kept in what they leave in your heart.”
The boy took the box home but didn’t put them on straight away. Instead, he placed them in a corner beside a photograph of his brother. Every afternoon, instead of gazing at the shop window, he’d look at the box. And when he finally did slip them on, it wasn’t to run or play—it was to walk to the park where he and his brother used to sit, to settle onto the same worn bench… and smile.
Because sometimes, objects aren’t just objects.
They’re bridges.
They’re ways of holding on.
They’re how we keep loving, without ever saying goodbye.
