Poem: Shadow

CW: abuse, sexual assault, mental illness, non-explicit animal death

This poem is nearly a year old now but I only just got around to posting it. It is dated 11th April 2020 and makes reference to several of my other poems, A Home in Your Own Skin and Churchyard. Remember to click the "actual poem" tag to see all of the poems I've posted here.

Shadow:

Me and my shadow swap places sometimes,

to see if anyone will notice. My mother

thinks I am just a shadow; she does not

understand how my friends call me funny,

creative, warm, because as I have written

many times before, she cannot love without

shattering, shouted me silent too many times

to hear my best jokes. When she visited my

new flat for the first time - in a city three

hundred miles away - I didn't speak for two

days after. My manager pulled me aside

because my shadow's face did not know

how to smile when a customer asked me

what someone with my qualifications was

doing working here. The first time my best

friend saw my shadow changed my life;

I saw in their eyes their sudden reverent

vow to protect my light at all costs, and I

felt loved for the first time in seventeen

years. They hold me sometimes, and I see

it again. Some people prefer my shadow:

in not knowing a smile, it does not show

crooked front teeth, which many people

have delighted in informing me ruin my

selfies; lacking opinions, it does not offend.

When my shadow takes over, I am another

place, watching a sunset over the ocean at

the end of a pier in my own chest, or else

cradling a dead pigeon to my heart as I

carry it to the churchyard. My shadow

lived my life for three months after he

shushed me enough times that I stopped

saying no - a lesson learned from my

mother's loathing of my attempts at bodily

autonomy. Once, a friend told me that I

was easier to be around "like this"; it was

the most hurtful thing anyone had ever

said to me. A day later, I mumbled my

first half-hearted joke in six weeks, and

my counsellor (who was also my biology

teacher, and also my friend) cried because

it meant I was coming back. He said when

I was me, I glowed the brightest of anyone

he had ever met. I don't hate my shadow

for its silent empty dark; someone needs

to stand and take the abuse while I watch

sunsets and bury dead pigeons. But I hate

the grief in my friend's eyes when she

realises she's talking to my shadow. I hate

losing my sunshine for people who should

have known better than to treat me that

way. I hate grieving days and months lost

to a darkness I can too easily be convinced

I deserved. I don't just want to live in the

sunshine; I want to be the sun warming my

best friend's face as they cry through a gin

and tonic on a Thursday night. I want to

be bright enough that their shadow is just

their shadow. I want to make them feel

loved for the first time in twenty-two years.

I want to hold their hand while our shadows

hold each other, stretching out behind us

over the ocean in the setting sun.