Heels

If you watch closely, women never step on their high heels when climbing up stairs.
Their only support comes from the pads of their toes, and rarely from a railing -- because women don't need them: they're fine, thank you very much.
They're all so graceful. Of course, the fine lady before me makes no exception. Could easily be mistaken for a deer, as she's heading up the steps in the subway station. 

I'm barely a couple of steps beneath her, just far enough that the smell of her perfume is little more than a hint, and that her navy, knee-length dress doesn't brush my knee when she hitches one ankle in front of the other in her soft ascent.

She moves like acacia honey. Her navy hips are hypnotic, edged in confidence and calculation. The woman walks as if she's stepping on the bare, dry skulls of every single man who has ever regarded her down the bridge of his nose.

I look down at my palms- as dirty with dust and sketched with grime as the soles of her velvet high-heeled shoes.
I'm breathing the clogged air and exhaling ash. She's breathing rose perfume and exhaling crimson lipstick.
Fashion kills.
And my eyes slip down, down, over infinite legs, to the smooth sole of her shoe -- a continuous line that joins the pads of her toes to her glittering heel seamlessly, in a waving design with only rounded, so easy to fall off of, edges.
The black heel of her stiletto hovers in the air, almost touching the stained marble every time the woman climbs another step.
I don't see anything except for her hips, for the hem of her swaying dress.
All it would take for the woman to topple over would be just a small, unnoticeable, little --
Yank.
Dirty fingers clasp around the navy of her dress, just as she's about to place her foot on another stair; the smooth, round sole of her left  slides from under her, and she tips back.
For a second she looks as if she's flying.
And she's a blur of
Navy
Navy...
Navy-

Red.