The Shadow

There was a man
who, for no reason other than being human,
was cursed to wear the heavy hide of a wolf’s shadow
for the rest of his life.
For years he senses his predator
merely feet behind him,
hears it panting,
and wonders,
What the hell is it waiting for?

I was picked on in Hebrew school
for being weird.
One day, a boy spit in my thermos of tea.
I left class and hid in the chapel.
I tried to pray, but got lost
in thought looking at the framed artwork around the room
all depicting Noah’s ark.
How quickly we forget
what shook our bones
only a moment earlier!
My eyes moved clockwise around the room
counting how many rainbows I could find.

10 years later.
The man doesn’t even notice it anymore.
His back has grown so strong
that he doesn’t even check for the shadow.
But the marauder still follows him,
even though
the man forgets it was ever there.

A bad Salvia trip as a Junior in high school
made me believe my reality
was a sitcom that had been taken off the air.
Suddenly, these TV crew technicians--
made out of animated puzzle pieces
the color palate of my old, plastic Barbie playhouse--
began to tear down “the set” of my life.
They told me emotions--
happiness, sadness, love--
were not real.
I sat in summer school math class the next day.
shaking, holding back tears, so confused
how I was still alive;
how reality persists.

Ignoring his ­uninvited +1
improves the man’s life a great deal.
Eventually, his friends don’t see
the wolf or the shadow,
either.
New people he meets
don’t even notice its muted snarls
or the footprints it leaves in the snow.

The image
of blurry, square, gray tiles
when my high school counselor
and the school social worker,
crouching on the bathroom floor beside me,
tried to talk to me.
They repeated my name
over and over.
It was right after a teacher had
come up to me in art class and said,
“Your friend, Kamila, is dead.”
Then that feeling like you just realized
that your wallet isn’t in your pocket.
You realize that you must have
lost it a while ago.
On top of missing this valuable thing,
you feel deceived for temporarily
thinking you had something
that you actually didn’t have,
and that you took advantage
of that peace you had
in your ignorance.
They said

my name
again
and again.

It is still there,
even though he doesn’t remember
that if had ever been a part of him.

Memories like these
don’t even cross my mind anymore.
A heart runs out of space for them,
at some point,
to make room for new ones.
The first ones to go are always those
we least want to acknowledge.

I don’t go to synagogue anymore.
I don’t use my real name anymore.

The wolf licks its lips.