Reflections. Shadows. Yellow flowers. Sunlight. Butterfly. Rustling leaves. The light, the dark. The light. The dark.
Brief moments of flight, then falling, landing, flying
again.
A red bird has joined me here, perching momentarily atop a
thorny bush. Somehow omnipotently knowing exactly where to place his tiny feet;
how to best avoid the thorns. If only such rare knowledge could be mine.
I’m thinking of my childhood swing set. The soothing motion
of the swing, the creaking voice inside the chain, always there, keeping me
company, keeping pace with rise and fall.
I want to do a flip but I’m afraid. Always too afraid. What
if I land wrong? What if I break something? What if-what if-what if?
I’m tired of myself today. Tired of being who I am. So
tethered. So bound. So structured.
I land upon my hands and knees, then stretch out like a cat,
my arms extended above my head, my stomach resting on the warm surface of the
trampoline. I linger there above the ground, floating on a porous surface. I
can see through to the dirt below me, dinted by the recent rain falling through
the mesh it hides beneath. I’m thinking that it’s like the sea floor. Tiny
heart-shaped leaves reside there—token residents from the vine that winds
itself around the metal frame. I’m imagining a seahorse when the sun peeks out
from his ethereal hiding place and blankets me with warming rays.
The outline of my shadow is now visible beneath me, and I
think I am a shadow angel. A free form. So unfettered, unhindered, surreal. No
features. Nothing marring the smooth, dark surface that is me. And only me.
Only what could be within, nothing from without. Maybe this is who I am. Maybe
this is all I’ll ever be. And would it matter?
My shadow moves when I move, perspectives shifting as my
eyes adjust, focusing from dark to light, from shadow to its obverse. Now I
feel like Peter Pan, and Wendy has sown fast my shadow. It will always follow,
wherever I may go. Will always be a part of me.
And yet we’re always changing.
And so I wonder, what is me? Am I a whole or just a part? A
whole made up of separate parts? Of flowing, changing matter I’ve restricted
into…this?
As I ponder, the sun retires behind another cloud and my
shadow self has vanished once again into the dirt. Hiding from me. Waiting for
me. Never really there at all.
Perhaps like me; perhaps my restless counterpart. So very
much like all we do in life. Like memories and laughter and the marks they’ve
left behind. Faded scars, reluctant daydreams; souls flown free from earthly
hope.
So very much like shadows. Falling once and then a ghost.
A moment in this lifetime.
A moment here…then gone.
