Shadows
Walking to my car from the grocery store
I stepped over a stranger’s shadow,
looked at where its eyes should have been and felt
a familiar tug
a passing greeting from a friend
a nod in the hallway, maybe
a muttered “how are you”
strangely familiar for the cast shape of a body
that wasn’t even mine
-- that’s the thing with shadows, though
they are as much ours as they are not:
funhouse mirror puddles of gray behind us
beside us
before us
unrecognizable even to their source
(Have you ever jumped at your own image on the wall?)
Reminder: even the molecular certainty of our own bodies is malleable,
see: spilled and distorted on the asphalt
It is easier to know them for a second:
A single image of heather limbs
Mocking strides over curbs and shopping carts
Familiar because it does not have to bear my resemblance
(When I see my shadow I feel the need to test its motions,
raise my hand as though it might not be mine)
Even as I type this, my shadow sits beneath me,
hazy hands hovering over the keys, we link fingertips with each keystroke
still it seems foreign --
Too flat to move like I do
Too lifeless to hold me within it
Almost a mockery: “look how simple I can make you”
so between two silhouettes, I choose to befriend the simpler shade
a child of angle and sunlight, fruit fly lifespan
maybe in this moment I know that woman’s shadow better than she does
and somehow, that makes up for
all that I will never know
and the dissonance between myself and
the sun starved spot trailing at my heels
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