Shadow

A shadow always follows you,
Hollows you out,
Screeching a song, telling you
You’re wrong, you’re hideous:
It’s insidious, but it’s inside you
And outside, crawling on your skin,
Creeping up your spine,
Burdening your back,
Deadweight that you can’t vacate,
An albatross, a cross,
A symbol that you cannot shed
Or shred.
It shows you greener grass in front
Of someone else’s house,
Tells you you’re in the
Incorrect box, that you’re a peg
Neither square nor round,
That you’re a fake,
A foil
From which people recoil
In horror, in disgust
As you flake like rust, like snow,
Nursing a secret you know they know.
You are falling apart
In all the wrong ways
(As if there’s a right way)
But there is this shadow
You want to wish good riddance
But it’s a riddle, a rattle
Of deafening critique,
Always pathetique,
Always there,
Reminding you and your half-ass
Half-empty glass
That it’s five o’clock somewhere.

After Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Itara Halen (she/her) is the pen name of an invisibly disabled, bisexual emerging poet based in Washington, DC who has been weaving words and otherwise making creations since she was a young child.

Image: Matthew Bowden www.digitallyrefreshing.com, Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons