Confronting Shadows

They wait at the edge of the mirror, not behind you— but within the silver. Smudges you tried to wipe away with sunlight and small talk. Shadows do not scream. They whisper. They come not as monsters but as familiar outlines— the shape of your silence, the weight of your almost, the version of you that never learned how to leave. You thought healing was a climb into the light, but it begins underground— where shadows bloom like bruises that remember what you forgot. To confront them is not to fight them. It is to look without blinking, to name what once named you. The fear. The fault. The face you wore when no one was watching. And when you do, they soften. They loosen. Not gone— but seen. And in seeing, you step back into the light not as escape, but as return. Whole, because you touched what was hidden and did not flinch.