Thursday, November 30, 2017

Shadows

Just like in Peter Pan, the summer I turned twenty-seven, I lost my shadow. He hopped on a train headed east, said he was flying out to France because he heard the women there were pretty. I was ashamed of how shallow my shadow was, who had, or so it seemed to me, been birthed from my body. But that changed things for me, for the rest of the summer, I only went out at night, avoiding light as others sought it out. I wandered the darkest alleys and began to appreciate the shades of darkness in a new way. I could see that darkness had all sorts of tones, and the large black mass of a trash can was somehow darker than the asphalt as were the branches of a large tree still hung with sickening yellow leaves. I realized that the darkness gathered in places just like the light, and I thought to stay that way forever, far away from my shadow, chasing the darkness, a decision, I have rarely regretted. 

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Winter

Sometimes in late winter, I feel myself sinking as the leaves do, beneath a thin veil of water. And I try and pull myself up by smiling at everyone I see during the day. This morning on the bus, I smiled at an elderly woman toting groceries from the Wal-Mart that's just around the corner from my place. She looked away, and I looked away. I felt that we'd actually connected, not in the moment that our eyes locked, but when they turned from each other, watched the tattered remains of leaves in the trees, the street skimming by like memory. We spent the rest of the bus ride just like that, not looking at one another at all. I've never felt so close to anyone.