you know when the sun is setting

and your shadow becomes long and longer until it fades away entirely, until it is absorbed into an all consuming darkness?

Are you familiar with this moment?

Well, perhaps it is not so much one moment as it is a million moments strung together.

One moment your shadow is smaller than you are, but it is quick, right on your every step.

And the next it has grown long and it is slow now.

The next you lost your shadow entirely, unable to distinguish your shadow from the darkness that follows the sunset.

And you missed when each of these moments happened.

And you missed a million other moments in between.

You caught them too late.

When did your shadow fade to nothing?

And how could you have been so distracted that you missed it?

...

I imagine that this is what losing you feels like.

I didn't notice when it happened right away, maybe I got distracted, I wasn't paying attention like I thought I was.

Even if I had paid more attention, I couldn't have done anything to stop the sun from setting.

For when you are up against the sun, and the sun has already made up its mind, you don't stand a chance.

There was a moment, a million moments really, after you left where I did not want to let go of you. I kept grasping for my shadow in the dark.

But my shadow grew longer and farther away from me and I didn't recognize it anymore.

And then, suddenly, slowly it wasn't there anymore. As if it had gotten up and walked away from me.

And I no longer carried the weight of the shadow.

I now carry the weight of all of the darkness in the hopes that my shadow is somewhere in there. That you are somewhere in there.

You would think that an absence of light would be weightless.

You would be wrong.

I carry that weight everywhere.

In it my grief.

The tears.

Somewhere in the darkness I lost my trust.

And that is heavy.

But every morning, without fail, the sun rises again.

The weight of you is lifted from me.

I am as tall as the light.

I forget, if only for a moment, what it is to be consumed by your shadow.

And it all feels like nothingness now.

I no longer notice the shadow of you that still follows me.

It still follows me.

I have become too accustomed to looking forward, squinting into the sunlight, to pay much attention to you, holding on at my heels as long as the light lasts.

AMV