Shadow

Louis Daguerre, Plaster casts, Société française
de photographie, 1837

Ahead, approaching, some stranger comes
walking, loose-limbed and arms swinging wide—
that silhouette, shadow-play brushing a scuffle,
a soft shoe, a memory. Familiar, unfamiliar, the
stride—they grow taller, elongate, and I catch
myself, my self. It’s me, it’s my shadow blocking
the light, as liquid and dark as ink from the well.
My harbinger twin, spilling stories I can’t yet tell.