Darkness, My Asylum

It's in the light that you see the shadows. And it's in the dark that you see the light...

Tonight, I sit in the dark. There's but the faintest of shadows from the light outside my window, and the lamp in the corner of my room. My shadow is stiller than a frosted lake but, perhaps, just as cold. It feels foreign to me, now. A stranger hiding amidst its kind in this grim room.

Despite its stillness I feel the length of my life, toiling beneath my skin; just as the water beneath the frozen lake. It rumbles, the endless cry of running water. Ever thirsty for more. The only dead water is still water.

I cannot bear myself to move. The weight of my years has settled upon me like the finest of dust layers. In my motionlessness is my shadow caught. It cannot but obey me. It hides now. Perhaps, so do I.

From what? The toil and froth? The unrelenting waterfall of life I've temporarily captured in my silence? My still serenity of the moment?

All of these things, I'm sure. For it's in this moment of motionless that I am free to hide, just as my shadow. The world turns outside these walls but, for now, until the desperate morning, they shield me. From the light. The shadow-giving light that demands I live. For even now, while the water flows heavy with current beneath the ice, it is thin ice.

Though I move not, my shadow ever creeps. On the morn my shadow will not be where I commanded it to stay. To hide with me. Instead it hides from me. It lurks amongst its brethren to circumvent the fury of its owner. Me.

Why do I cower from my own shadow?

Why do I cower from the roaring waters beneath my stilled ice?

Why do I cower from life, where my shadow doth walk?

Evermore it creeps along these walls, through the night. Carrying the burden of the life I've lived. For it is in the walking shadow that the past lies, and in the darkness my only asylum.