My Shadow Left Me

I noticed it on a Tuesday.

It was late afternoon — that golden hour when shadows stretch long and silent across concrete, like memories we pretend not to see. I was walking home from work, tired and slightly numb, when I looked down and realized:

My shadow was gone.

At first, I thought it was the angle. Or maybe the light. I turned around, looked for streetlamps, checked the sun. But no matter where I stood — there was nothing beneath me. No silhouette. No faint trace. Just pavement.

I waved my hand. Nothing. Stomped my foot. Nothing.

It wasn’t a trick of the light.

I had been abandoned.

I spent the next few days pretending it was normal. I laughed at my own paranoia, even joked about it to a coworker. “Guess I’m so empty now, even my shadow left me,” I said.

He laughed. I didn’t.

Because the truth was, I felt it.

Like something had been torn off quietly — not with pain, but with the ache of something that had always been there... and suddenly wasn't.

I stopped going out during the day. I couldn’t stand seeing other people walking around with their shadows faithfully following. Their dark companions clinging to their heels, bending as they moved — reflections of something honest and permanent.

Mine was gone. And worse: I had no idea where it went.

Until it showed up again.

It was about a week later. I saw it standing outside a coffee shop across town — leaning against the brick wall like it had always belonged there. It wasn’t attached to anyone. It moved independently, like a man, but flat against the ground. And it was mine.

Same posture. Same slight hunch in the shoulders. Same tilt in the head.

But this version of me moved with ease. It laughed with people. It held a coffee cup. It nodded thoughtfully at the barista like it had thoughts, dreams, opinions.

It was living.

I stood frozen, heart hammering. How long had it been free? How long had it wanted to be?

It noticed me.

And for a moment — maybe less — it paused. Like it wanted to say something. Like it almost missed me. But then it turned away and vanished into the crowd, slipping beneath feet and tires, into the folds of city life like it had always been there.

That night, I didn’t sleep.

I kept wondering: Was it ever mine? Or did I just carry it for a while?

Maybe it got tired of my routines. My apologies. My hiding. Maybe it waited years for a moment when I was too busy looking away to notice it slipping out from under me.

People talk about losing themselves — in work, in grief, in numbness.

I lost my shadow.

In the days that followed, I started seeing it more often. Not following me — just... nearby. Reading books I never finished. Sitting on benches I passed by every day but never touched. It danced once, at a street festival. I hadn’t danced in years.

It never approached me.

It didn’t need to.

I realized then: it wasn’t punishing me. It was becoming me. Or who I might have been, had I not let the light dim so long ago.

Now, I write letters to it. Not on paper — in thought, in quiet moments. Sometimes out loud, to no one in particular. Sometimes in the mirror.

“I hope you're sleeping well.”
“Do you still hum that song I used to hate?”
“Is it nice, being seen?”

It never replies, of course. But sometimes I feel a presence beside me on park benches, or the warmth of something beside my feet just as dusk begins.

Maybe one day, it’ll return.
Or maybe it’ll just keep living — for both of us.
Maybe that’s enough.