shadow tells his story.

i know it has something to do with my dad. at the core of it, i know in my twisting, febrile gut, that it has everything to do with that man. i feel like entropy, like the negative side of someone else, and in so birthing me he saw his own shadow slide out of his wife's womb. my mother tried to love me like a three-dimensional kid, but i was just too elusive. at nighttime, i would disappear entirely, into my room behind a locked door, staring at a bright light, wishing myself to exist.

i spent most of my time thinking about Love, love and what it means. my mother said "i love you" to me and i discovered i did not, in fact, Love her back. i did not feel about her as i did my departed father, who had himself turned into a shadow and fled. i reasoned in the sheets that love opened the door to reciprocation; in fact, demanded it, and so my mother was eagerly knocking by Loving, but i was disgusted by the urgent rhythm of her rapping, chose to remain silent inside. eventually, she'd go away.

winter came, and i nearly froze to death.

i came to know a ghost who had the same name as me, but i cannot say we were ever friends. eventually, the ghost left and another came. sometimes two at a time. they never stayed for long, although whether i drove them off or if they left of their own accord i have never discovered. i took to reading, a passive, greedy voyeur of the lives of others. i had to stop to go to school and dinner. i started choking on the food during dinner because i chewed so rapidly. this, of course, in order to escape the thick silence of the dinner table. agonizing. it was high noon for a shadow like me, squirming and agonizing in a black puddle directly under their feet.

one night the house burned down and i was set free. i wandered like a dust devil on the sides of highways. travelled. saw nothing.

i never tried to find my father. he existed, out there, somewhere. i pictured him old and balding, ugly. aviators, since that's all he ever wore in every Polaroid i ever saw of him. a goofy, doughy face. the unpleasant roundness of having let-himself-go around the middle. caved-in shoulders. a hole in the side of his head. for a time, he moved into his parents' house, which happened to be the house next to my family's house, distant only for a small swath of pine and birch trees. in the winter: small flashes of the siding through the bare boughs. that was as close as he got to my memories. i pictured small, run-down apartments, everything always dingy, dull, drab. off-yellow walls. a beaten, defeated refrigerator. maybe an old pack of cigarettes - where else do i get this filthy habit? - maybe a typewriter. the curtains are pulled - heavy, yellow muslin. the sunlight barely filters through it. dust in the air, mixed with small dots that glint or gleam.

i came to a small harbour town just past the millenium and decided to hunker down, head against the blast. winter came, and i almost froze to death again. summer was a kind thaw - even the spring, though blustery and brusque in its manner, was a relief against the unforgiving chills of winter. i found some more ghosts hidden in the corners of this town. they were so talkative i could barely stand it. sometimes they talked when their mouths weren't moving - but i could still hear them.

then, one day, the streets filled up with them - everywhere, passing to and fro - so many that i thought i was the one in the wrong.

i still am not convinced.