Tatyana Carney | + Follow Poet |
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Shadow Space

You brushed your breathing shadow
with sleeping mist you sprayed on your pillows
hoping, for moments gone grey and still,
that the shadow would slumber for you as you pass.
But the sleeping spray, I hate to tell, was a placebo
a sugar pill of sorts as they say
and while your insomnia cradled your mind
like a bowl full of sentenced fermentation
your heart told you just to breathe deep
Breathe the mist, and you'd sleep
with the tolerance of herb induced peace
never quite reached in the deepest midnight hour.
Your shadow knows the mist doesn't work
It won't unwind, it'll go bizerk
and follow you in each step that you make
like company shoes to bowl in.
Always a size too big, or too small - 
and never in tune with your sense of style.
It will do this as you pace the floor at 3am,
It will follow you to work and look abnormally big
in the noon day sun - just to make you think twice
about it's good motives.

So - Here's what I say to you -
Make peace with your shadow.
Invite it to tea and key lime cookies.
Settle your breath as you have a good talk
about boundaries, and how you could use a little space
Maybe you could ask it to take a day or two off -
just rainy days of course where it wouldn't be 
ultra missed.
I think your shadow would acquiesce to these terms
with relative ease and then two things would happen:

1 - Your shadow would stop having something to prove.
You would be acknowledging it's invaluable worth
by the tea and cookies  (after all - how many shadows do you 
know that get an invitation like that...)

                             ~and~

2 - You could stop paying good money for sleeping spray.
(I have a feeling that the reason you can't sleep has to do with
your very unhealthy shadow/person relationship.)

And, so in closing, I say:

Free your shadow, Gain your sleep , and, most importantly - Save me some cookies...

Copyright © Tatyana Carney | Year Posted 2006

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