It’s hard being a shadow,

especially though I tell myself

I’m not an illusion,

that the ghost in me

that is ignored,

that is playfully abandoned

from time to time

exists and feels pain like a Winter’s breath

on a fading scar,

rising with pinched assault

and damnation in the dead

of lost cause night…

I am not an illusion,

a conjured trick of morphine,

a dream,

a nightmare that an addict once had

in bleak black and white stereotype,

the noir in the film…

I am not an illusion,

I am not the product of delusion

of fantasy, of symbolism…

yet the odd false impression

is perhaps a deception you mistook

when your words made no sense,

for how can they

to an artistic impression

fabricated when there is no light

to rein the shadow in.

 

Ian D. Hall 2016