ME AND MY SHADOWS

No idea what she looks like. No idea where she lives. I do know, however, that what I do know is nothing about my constant companion who has multiple personas. The whatever she is appears without my calling her. Just yesterday I was about to buy a gorgeous, mouth-watering sacher torte when the apparition smacked me on my rear. I was startled. What was to be tonight’s dessert went right back in the refrigerated section of my favorite super market. A small breath of air, or a gentle kiss, touched my face.

Go ahead, go ahead and guess. You think my conscience is my shadow, don’t you? You are wrong. If she is, what is that blackish thing on the pavement, on the wall? Sometimes its in front of me, sometimes behind. Last week it was strange, very weird.  It grew and grew and grew. If that was a shadow of me, I must be the tallest lady on stilts in the world. A Barnum & Bailey freak. The long thing stared at me, shrugged its shoulder, pushing me to turn right. I didn’t want to go right and went left.  The shadow swallowed my legs and then ate me up. I could still walk but was alone.

Day after day these phantoms haunt me.  Not long ago I was tempted to buy a new party dress that I badly needed but was resisting. As I began to put my slax and blouse on again, from nowhere, my charge plate fell on the floor, turned itself over. The plate was living, I swear. It told me to use it. I bought the dress.

Once a voice belonged to a little birdie. It was blue and sat on my shoulder. Its chirp said, ‘do it, do it’ and I did what I was considering doing. I managed 10 miles in the Revlon Cancer Walkathon, tripped at the end and broke my ankle. I should have not listened to the birdie.

Ghosts? Maybe. I don’t see any ectoplasm , don’t hear floors creak, trumpets blow. But there are times I do hear my husband, do feel his presence. He tells me to give my children more, buy a new car, get anything I want. I look in the mirror and see a gray spot behind my back. There is no gray when I turn around. The sun is shining between the Venetian blinds.

I talk to the missing gray spot. ‘How can I get what I want when I want nothing, nothing besides you.’ The blinds close by themselves. The sun, the gray spot and my husband are gone. My shadow is behind me.