Shadows

"Shadows fall," I tried to explain to you.

"Shadows fall like litte brackish gifts sent straight from the heavenly boats, each one with a personality, a memory of things that used to be, and things that could still come. Do you understand?"

You didn't.

"Well ... it's like this... They see it all with single eyes, black like the ring around the sun, black like the soil under your feet. Shadows fall, oh yes they do, but shadows get back up as well."

"What do you mean? Shadows? Doesn't my shadow belong to me?"

"Not quite. See, shadows dance and shadows play, shadows wonder and shadows lay, just like you or I. They grow and stretch and pull like taffy on the big crawling columns in the heart of a sugar deathmachine."

"The what?" you say.

"Just listen man, listen. Their arms rust just like yours, just like fragile singing, see--they get all hard and heavy and difficult to move, like tree limbs that touch the ground in shelter, like jellyfish drying in the sun, like a young girl's heart after too many calloused lovers and too much passionless sex." You giggle at this. I'd forgotten how immature you still were. "Just like you or I. Just don't turn on the lights, please don't turn them on. The shadows don't like that."

You smile.

"Shadows fill the empty spots," I continued.

"The empty spots in eyes?"

"The empty spots in lives, the corners of the room where the dust gathers ... but they're happy there, you know? They're happy in those little plaster cracks in otherwise bare walls and wares, breathing in the poison gas."

"I forgot all about the gas."

"That's what happened to it. The shadows breathed it in. Otherwise we wouldn't be sitting here talking, we'd still have to use the gasmasks. But they're happy to breath it in, they're happy to live in the spaces of the basement baseboards and under pillow breaths. Armies of them, living in the walls, digging in dirt and bird cages."

"Armies of them. Yeah. I think I know what you mean. Infants and giants, they look so small against the cities and so large against the forest," you say.

"Exactly!" I pat you on the shoulder. Maybe you are starting to understand. "Their hair is black, their eyes are black, their skin is black but their hearts are a wicked scorching blue that reflects ancient lives in its crystal flame. They dance like savages around that flame, speaking fairy tales and saying blessings over your head."

Your eyes get bigger and you start to nod.

"They sit and chatter and reminisce, they've seen it all, all the longing hope and tears you shed at little defeats and inconsequential frustrations. Every tiny waking moment of your pithy little life they've seen and catalogued and discussed, the shadows have."

"They've even got inside jokes about me, don't they?"

I nod. "They sweeten the night with smalltalk and dark, smokey tea. They're not free but their voices sound like cancer, their cancer sounds like hope."

"What was that about the sugar deathmachine? What the fuck was that?"

"Listen! I'm trying to tell you. It's all about the poison gas. And please, don't cuss. Your mother wouldn't approve."

"Oh," you blush.

"Yeah, now here--the shadows, they know where they're going and they know were they've been. They're like toothaches singing to a blank grey sky. Remember that?"

"Yeah I do, at the ridgeline last night."

"Yep. They were crawling like leeches, roaches, slugs and worms over the cracked parchment surface of a life, your life, my life, everybody's life."

I stare at you for a second. You look away.

"Now if you want their prayers, repeat after me: Shadows fall oh yes they do."

"'Shadows fall oh yes they do.'"

"Shadows fall on me and you."

"'Shadows fall on me and you.'"

"Good," I say. "Good, now lets get home before the sun sets and the wolves come out again."