Shadow Child
What has that child been doing again?
Don’t tell me: snipping out shadows,
all shapes and sizes, making a mess.
No doubt there’ll be little silhouettes of us,
with our teeth and happiness obliterated.
Are we never to be spared this?
She hides herself away for hour after hour
while we wait for her to go off like a siren,
to publish herself, to show us up.
And that stare she gives me,
fixed on something beyond my shoulder.
What is it she’s so fascinated by?
As for how many times a day she washes herself
I lose count, the plughole clogged with shadows
I have to steel myself to deal with.
What has she to wash away?
It is beyond anything. If she only knew
what she was doing to us.
This obsession with shadows.
She finds them no matter how well hidden.
She flaunts them in our faces.
Worse than that, the journal she keeps
fat with shadows, sticking to every page.
To think her hands did this.
Her hands looming with shadows,
that flutter all around me
and will not be brushed away.
David Mark Williams has been published in several magazines including South, Envoi and Orbis. His debut collection, The Odd Sock Exchange, will be published by Cinnamon Press in 2015.