Your Shadow’s Echo

Your Shadow’s Echo

I met your shadow on the brick; it kept your measured stride,

a midnight twin that knew the tricks of leaving at my side.

It spoke in shapes the moon could read, in vowels of smoke and stone,

and every step it threw ahead returned to me alone.

¨¨

It held the angle of your jaw, the slope your shoulder knew,

a moving map of almosts drawn in graphite, dusk, and blue.

I chased it down the quiet block where windows breathed in light,

but echoes do their finest work two heartbeats after night.

¨¨

“Come home,” I said, to absence cast, and watched the answer bend—

a ripple through the streetlamp’s gold that wouldn’t quite pretend.

Your shadow paused upon a door and slipped beneath the frame,

then folded back into the dark that will not sign its name.

¨¨

I bargained with the pavement’s gloss; I offered coins of rain,

I held my breath like careful glass and counted out the pain.

The echo kept its covenant: it rang, then learned to fade,

a bell that understood the street was not a promised blade.

¨¨

At dawn, I found a softer proof where alley roses climb—

The thorn that once drew blood from us now held a drop of time.

I cupped it like a candle end, a coal that didn’t glow,

and whispered you into the day to see what it would grow.

¨¨

I walk with shadows differently; I let them go ahead,

the way a path runs on a bit beyond the traveler’s tread.

Your echo lives where echoes live: in rooms of hush and bone,

and I, who kept the door ajar, can finally walk alone—

¨¨

Not empty, but in tune at last with silence’s small vow:

To hold what mattered in its shape without demanding now.

So when the evening writes your form against a longer wall,

I bless the blur, step through the light, and do not beg it all.