My Shadow Walked Away

I noticed it on a Wednesday.

The sun was low and golden, casting long shadows across my apartment floor. I was pouring coffee, lost in some thoughtless trance, when I looked down and realized something strange—my shadow wasn’t there.

At first, I thought maybe the angle of the light was off. Maybe I was just tired. I walked toward the window, hoping to see it stretch out on the wall beside me. Nothing. I waved my hand. Still nothing.

I laughed nervously.

A glitch in perception, I told myself. A trick of light. That was easier than the alternative: that I had somehow lost a part of myself that had always just... existed. Like breathing. Or guilt.

But then I saw it—across the room.

Standing upright, not attached to anything, not following me, not mimicking me. It was just... there. And then, without a sound, it turned.

And walked away.

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I didn’t chase it.

You’d think I would’ve. You’d think I’d panic. But all I felt was a strange relief, like something heavy had stepped off my chest.

In the days that followed, I kept expecting it to come back.

I looked in mirrors. Checked the pavement when I walked. Nothing. I moved through the world lighter, somehow. Empty. I laughed more. I slept better. I forgot to flinch when I passed by reminders of my past.

People said I seemed different. “You’re glowing,” a coworker told me. “Less tense,” said my sister.

But sometimes, when I passed by alleyways, or stood under lamplight alone, I felt like I was being watched.

By something familiar.

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Then the dreams began.

I’d see my shadow in places I’d never been—standing beside strangers, sitting at the foot of my childhood bed, staring at me with those empty, black eyes. I say “eyes,” but shadows don’t have faces. And yet I knew—somehow—that it was watching me. Studying me. Learning.

And it was angry.

It had taken more than darkness when it left. It had taken secrets. Regret. Pain. All the things I’d buried deep and convinced myself I’d healed from. But maybe that darkness was important. Maybe we need to carry a little shadow to remember who we were.

Because then things started going wrong.

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I began forgetting names. My own handwriting looked foreign. I’d find notes written to myself in my old voice—bitter, sharp, afraid. I saw photos of myself smiling in places I didn’t remember visiting.

And I kept seeing it. Watching.

Once, on the subway, I saw a man’s shadow stretch across the car. It wasn’t his. It moved a second slower. It turned toward me when he didn’t.

I left the city after that.

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I live in the woods now. No tall buildings. No streetlights. No hard lines for shadows to cling to.

And yet, every now and then, in the pale blue moonlight, I see something flicker at the edge of my vision. Something black, thin, shapeless, but familiar. A whisper behind the trees. A memory I thought I’d erased. A version of me that refused to be forgotten.

It doesn’t speak. It doesn’t follow. Not yet.

But one day, it will stand beside me again.

And this time, I don’t think it’ll let me walk away.