Shadow Woman 

After a while, you start to forget. You try to recall what it felt like, to be that woman, to  be in that place. You try to bring tears back to your eyes, but it’s just too difficult to do.  An impossible task. And not impossible in the sense that to recall the memory would  bring back too much pain, but that it is too distant a memory now. Too small a pinprick  on the horizon of your life. Impossible to grasp. Your memories, your very existence,  the things that up until now have made you you, are fading into a blur of nothingness,  and to try and bring it all back into focus requires the kind of attention to sad details,  the kind of strength and determination, you’re not sure you possess anymore. You don’t  seem to have exercised that muscle enough lately. 

Could that mean you are finally happy? Or is it more likely that you are fading into the  shadows? That your experiences up until now, your traumas and your sadnesses, they  are irrelevant and immaterial. In fact, they are dissolving into atoms, floating away, and  with them, you too are floating away. Your eyes, once shining, both full of expectation  and memories from your past, are now deep ravines of emptiness. Your cheeks, shaded  now by the shadows pulling you deeper into the abyss, have submitted to their  unremarkable, placid place in the world. Your lips, once so full of lust and life, are now  sealed shut, their deep crimson of desire sucked into the void.  

Contentedness in the shadows, unseen and untouched. That’s where we all go once we  forget how to remember our pasts. When we lose touch of where we came from, and  who we once were. And for what? Or for whom? For another, for a man, for a baby,  for a lover, to become a mother. We let go of our sadness, our strife, our sex, and step  back into the shadows.