Shadow play

She thinks she saw his shadow in her room last night.

Fortuitous jump scare and the lamp falls over, in total darkness she scrambles to find him again.

Light returns, but his silhouette does not for the rest of the long night.

She is covetous of his time but learning that she is in love with the complexity of the person, and exhausted by the complexity of a vain situational narrative. He commits to both.

A wild fire is always burning in his eyes, condemning and enticing. Even when fatigued, embers are lit.

Beginning to assume the image of a lamb, she becomes wide eyed before the inevitable slaughter.

She’s painfully aware there is no absconding the knife.

Internalizing her fragility, this is not her normal state; she does not tell him of these things, and instead hands him small and awkward shaped puzzle pieces of herself.

With him she feels she must be small. She adores and condemns this all at once.

Begging him to command her again, only to recoil.

What does it take to lift this veil away from her eyes, to peer deeply into his void, and feel no tremors of fear.

In the film of the morning light, there is a hesitation in everything.

She will only hesitate when he craves her as self-assured.

They wrestle with the internal desire to give in to one another or release themselves back into the womb of the world.

Either way, she refuses to be so transparent in front of a paramour and equal adversary.

While he can only breathe as a dark outline, she is striving to become something luminescent, something pure, something whole.

They find each other now; only in an eclipsing purgatory.

She catches the Summers end in her hands and whispers such secrets there,

but the coming Autumn will too soon push those strange desires away.

This is growing up after all, but there is something in her that will always deeply yearn to regress.

She cannot help but chastise him, too eager for him to develop and meet her in the sun.

In return he humiliates her impatience.

When he rolls his eyes she can feel the blade enter beneath the rib.

Lower and lower and lower he wishes to drag her.

Irate with cheeks stinging of red singular shame.

He pretends not to notice, and takes no responsibility for his cruelty.

This is growing up after all, and there is something in him that will always bring her back to his depths.

He desires her in the same way he seeks destruction: selfishly, possessively, primal, with an imperious glance.

But it is here we must ask ourselves if the love we are given is the love we unconsciously desire; no matter the viciousness or percentage of poison on the tongue.

We must acknowledge that these dark impulses do not just happen to us, we seek them out and bring them forth. They belong to us and much as they plague us. They are the pet that runs off the leash.

They dip toes in the shallow pool of politeness now, fearful of the depth and afraid to venture deeper.

His shadow has not returned for weeks. This is just as devastating as it is relieving.

The tides on the horizon of their sunset are changing. She wonders if he will notice with indifference, and this is why they no longer dance.

They are the pets struggling to release themselves from the comfort of their leash. They are their own owners, tugging at the neck.