SHADOW
Prompt - Shadow : Imagine you are someone's shadow for a day
I am caught by the surprise of being conjured into existence as he rises from bed. It must be late, for the sunlight is already strong enough to give me the strength to follow. He goes to the bathroom, skipping the light for his eyes are yet to fully open, and leaves me to wait, a shadow-self of myself once more. Then we get on with our day together.
It's a sunny day, so I remain a close companion, a lively swinger of direction, keeping myself between him and my creator. A brisk journey, in constant step together. Passing bus renders me invisible, but I'm still there, still glue-close.
He enters the shop, and that's when things get confusing. The lights come from all angles and I am like an amoeba, splitting into cells that weaken me with every new incarnation, then suddenly rushing into one again, before subdividing once more. I feel I am thinned out, spreadeagled, a victim of circumstance.
And so the day passes. I, we, see him greet the customers, banter with colleagues, move around as he works through his shifts. While saying nothing, content to be largely ignored, until we can go out again, into the sun, and I stand proud before him, thirty feet tall, and I sense my own importance, how he is nothing without me, how he needs me to make him visible as much as I need him.
We will go home together, I will dissipate myself around the flat, I will dim and cower and fade, until the lughts go out, and I leave him in peace, now a part of the whole surrounding him.
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