Summary: Depressing shadows projected on the wall despite all the light around. Word Count: 384
Shadows were always on my wall crawling and creeping like a cockroach infestation from hell. I never knew the shadows for what they were until later in life, believing they were a bad daydream. Excuses served to delay acceptance such as when I thought too hard about infinity or how close we are from the edges of the veil between life and death. Those shadows stretched, tightened, and burned a permanent mark into my walls, being there more often as time went on.
The shadow’s tendrils wrapped around and strangled the light’s edge of everything I saw with spiral branching arms poison tipped it stabbed me and buried underneath my skin during unexpected moments. Those lead lined shadows became part of me, weighing down the good days, using up all the time to accumulate the bad nights into a pool of concrete solemnness. Days of endless reflection are a reminder of how much I indulged in bad muses: an addiction to dread, sleeping less thoughts, and drowning away any potential that could have been had, all due to the fear of what is to come, ruined by the shadows that invert feelings, sending a shower of cold thoughts over me in a hot flash. My body became a husk, leaving me dreary and useless to myself and others.
I have come to learn through painful nights, clutched to bed that these shadows will never return back to the void without me. However after great effort, I can see to it that they shrink, for I don’t control the shadow – but I do the light. It shines on its own surrounded by darkness. I am the one who holds the lights until it can grow more bright.
I built mazes of mirrors and lenses to focus, bend, and change pathways of the light. I am the stage manager, the director, and the actor who all use that same light to enact the story. I repainted my charred walls with imperfect stucco to make a beautiful mural of what was once decayed.
Nowadays my shadows dance about in a back and forth fight within life’s tragic and comedic scenes behind my walls, crackling and peeling away the veneer, but I remain steadfast in plastering over it, no matter how many times I need to do it.
Off Beat Off Kilter 