Shadow.

My entire existence is controlled by light,

Yet every time a photon comes near me, 

I run. 

The brighter the light, the darker I am,

And when the sun is low in the sky,

I stretch.

Through sturdier silhouettes of trees and buildings,

You stroll down the street, and

I follow.

Across grass and water, over cars and people,

I can only go where you take me.

I'm trapped. 

But when the light is finally gone,

and you lie useless in your bed, 

I'm free.

Aaron

Aaron never really thinks about me anymore. I mean, who would? I've been there his entire life. Sure, when we were first starting out, I was this thing of fascination.  Something to be roughly manipulated and played with. I remember when we were seven, we would stay up late with a flashlight just to play make believe. But now, it’s like I don’t even exist.

Time passes in the same old routine. We go to work at the office, trudge through the day, and spend the evening doing even more work from home. Aaron isn’t even exciting anymore. I think about the ones like me on TV that get to do fun things like flicker over trees in the amazon or run down bad guys in Alaska. I even get jealous of the poor fools that have to spend hours in old warehouses switching from one old piece of junk to the next. At least they get to be doing something.

I remember once that our third grade teacher read us Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. That is one of my favorite books. I can relate to Alice so well. She is lost and confused in Wonderland because she is constantly changing. She doesn’t know who she is anymore because of all the physical changes she is subjected to. That is how life is every day for me. I’m constantly moving and changing. One moment I could be chilling on a nice brick wall and the next I could be split in two! I change color! Well, not color really, values. One minute I can be pitch black, menacing, and the next I can be pale gray with barely any substance! And don’t even get me started on what it’s like to be 2D in a 3D world.

 When I first wake up, I’m this huge giant, but around the middle of the day I am merely a circle that Aaron stands on. The good part about that is, I always know that as more time progresses, I will once again become a giant, just on the other side of Aaron.

But after that is when the worst part of being me happens. People talk about death all the time. They talk about how it is inevitable, theorize what it could be like, whisper how scared they are about their own final day, and grieve when death takes someone else. People don’t know what real despair is like. At least there are theories about an afterlife. For me, there is nothing. Every single night of my life, sometimes more often than that, I just disappear. I become nothing. My existence ceases, until suddenly I am again. I loose time. There are just these huge jumps in my life where I know I have stopped. 

Every morning, I rejoice in existence. Every night, I despair over deletion.

I don’t expect Aaron to change how he lives his life.  He has enough to worry about without the guilt of knowing he erases me every time he walks into a movie theater. I just wish, that once in a while he would appreciate the fact that I’m there. I will never leave Aaron. He is never alone with me around. We are, literally, stuck together forever. Can’t a shadow just get some appreciation around here?

Round Up 23

Last Week’s Prompt: Write a story inspired by a color

Amanda

I like the idea behind Indigo and it had the potential to be a great story, but between school and being sick, I had a hard time writing it to be how I imagined. I also had a lot more of a backstory that took way too long to write, so I started over halfway through and tried to include the important details for the sake of the story, but maybe I will revisit the idea in the future and flesh it out more.

Guilt by association plays a big part into why “the girl” is so scared of the police because the bullies at her school told her she was a bad person because of guilt by association because her dad is in jail (not a big house as she would like to believe, but THE big house). Children who think they’re monsters are both sad and interesting to me, especially since I watched the new Netflix series “Stranger Things” this week as I was thinking of the prompt. The girl definitely looks like Eleven in my headcanon.

MY VOTE: Kylie

Korrin

I know the prompt said, “story” but I interpreted that as poetry. Poems can tell stories too. This is the story of blue.

Blue is such a basic color. It is everywhere in our life that I wanted to show the various aspects in which blue touches my life. Besides my own personal feelings on the color blue, it’s my favorite color so…, I also googled what things are associated with the color blue. Things such as emotions, stability, wisdom, and cleanliness were among my google search results. It was illuminating. And as always, I had to add in some fandom references because I’m a nerd.

I could go on and on about each line in this poem, but I won’t. Let’s just say sometimes I think I’m clever where I’m probably not. For example, the line “I am primary in your life.” Get it, blue is a primary color in the color wheel. Also “knowledge and wisdom within magic” is a loose reference to the best Hogwarts house, mine, Ravenclaw.

I titled it “Untitled No. 1” half because poem titles are like that sometimes and half because I didn’t want to use the word “blue” and I’m lazy.

MY VOTE: Amanda

Kylie

I wanted to use a lot of color in mine, and I wanted to use them in unconventional ways. No “red, the blood of angry men.” I wanted to use colors in weird ways that might not carry any significance to the reader, but obviously had a lot of symbolism for the protagonist.

Do I feel like I did my best? HAHAHAHA no. But I feel like it didn’t turn out as terrible as it was during my first few drafts, and I’m so grateful for that.

MY VOTE: Amanda

Next Week’s Prompt:

Create a story from the point of view of your character’s shadow. 

Color

That summer night was drunken with maroon. It steeped in the darkness, the haze spreading into the light with its lazy tendrils. It was a choking color, a color to get lost in.

Until you arrived.

You arrived in your turquoise mist, clarity emanating from your steps, from the way your hair moved to the way your hips swung when you walked. It was hypnotizing against the summer backdrop, and it took no time for my indigo heart to be drawn to your aura.

And then you were turquoise and I was orange, and our hands dripped a green I had never seen before as our colors met. Every touch was yellow and every sigh red, and when I showed you the indigo heart I had kept hidden for so long, you smiled in emerald.

It wasn’t until you left and the world went white that I realized you never showed me your heart.