I did not hide my body. Just the room inside my head. The skin it stood obedient, thoughts lay down playing dead. I knew of shadows before I knew light, before names learned how to divide, before mirrors taught me what to show and what must stay inside.

A shadow is called dangerous only because it stays behind us, changes its shape without asking, refuses to explain what it does.

This one - it’s not on the ground. You won’t find it at your feet. It waits in the limbo where thought and wanting meet. It is everything you think at night, all you feel but never say, every desire you learned to bury, so you could safely pass the day.

Behind me, a shadow gathers weight. Not born, not summoned, remembered too late. The mass of every part of me that lived through being told: it was too much, too deep, too dark or too heavy to hold.

I raise my hand, not in shame but in triage. Not everyone survives the moment they feel how large they are. Some fold themselves smaller, some cover their scars. Most keep their shadow folded, compressed into habits, like trapping raindrops between glass.

compressed to preferences, quirks, acceptable damage - a secret inventory of what they know but cannot manage. Some never meet it. Some cut it away. Some let it speak once and spend their lives apologising: for what it had to say.

I have seen two shadows meet. Not collide. Not consume. They did not need to speak. They already knew. After that, the world felt staged, every touch politely caged. Every lie felt safely placed  People quiet, disengaged. Once two lovers stand plain, Without disguise - there’s no way Back into innocent, small life.

You point at me to stay intact. You name me to remain unnamed. You call restraint a virtue and fear courage you can’t claim. But you carry the same mass behind your eyes, the same unslept thoughts and buried cries.

So look at my shadow. LOOK. Feel your breath go thin. Tremble not at what I carry, but at how you recognize  It moves too under your skin.

I carry what you cannot bear, the weight you feel but would not wear. You call it threat to survive your role. But I found a truth that would swallow you whole.

shadows.