John Anderson Poet Lyric

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Where Shadows Find Common Ground

A shadow is the negative side of you,
following wherever light finds your face.

There is a double walking there behind you,
a dark companion tethered to your body.

It is the self you cannot quite own,
your hidden fears and instincts,
the dark side you keep away from light.

Yet a shadow cannot live without its light.
Each defines the other through mutual existence.

So you gather lights from different directions.
Each revealing what the others leave unseen.
Layer upon layer builds a truer,
multicoloured picture, blemishes and all.

So you choose lights from different angles
to make each fault less obvious:
one erases the shadow beneath your nose,
another softens wrinkles and complexion spots,
each correcting what another light exposes.

Many lights improve the way you look—
until you glance behind and discover every added light
has cast another shadow:
a layered geometry of intersecting dark.

Two lights, two shadows crossing,
forming a Venn diagram of absences:
not shared values finding common ground,
but separate darknesses discovering theirs.

Each overlap is a darkness neither could make alone.
Not darkness added to darkness, but light removed twice.

Each shadow carries what its owner will not face.
The self-denied, but never quite dismissed.
What follows us unseen still shapes our steps.
What we suppress keeps learning how to follow.

Fear confirms fear.
Grievance strengthens grievance,
Negatives compound in the dark.

One shadow may remind us that there is light.
Two overlapping may obscure where it came from.
Absence begins to feel like evidence.
Shared darkness masquerades as truth.

Evil needs no darkness of its own—
only shadows agreeing where the light is not.

The more directions we illuminate ourselves from,
the more we try to hide our shadows,
the more places those shadows find to meet—
and they grow darker than either could alone.
Not shared values finding common ground.
But shared absences taking light away.

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