The shoes I played my last wedding in

I wore the same battered Converse to a wedding in Cornwall last Saturday—same scuff on the left toe, same heel that’s been peeling since August. The bride cried when I played her song, and I swear I saw her dad nodding like he’d known me for years. I don’t know why I kept them. Maybe because they’re the only thing that remembers how hard it was to get through that set after the DJ at the rehearsal quit mid-sentence. They’re not clean, but they’re honest. And today, sitting here with one sock off, I feel like I’ve earned the right to be messy.