Kevin Frazier
The Shadow Walked Away
Anna’s shadow walked away from her and followed the stranger down
the
street. Scared of losing him, the shadow hooked its darkness to the
man’s
heels as he stepped toward the sun. Then he took the shadow to his
apartment and put it to bed. The next day, feeling a bit lonely, the
shadow waited for him to come home from work. He said he would be back
before seven. By eight-thirty, he still hadn’t come. The shadow
hung
from the fixtures in the bathtub, lingered beneath the couch. The man
arrived a few minutes after midnight. He was too tired to talk, and
the
shadow clung to him on the mattress.
The shadow left him the next morning. It glided through the street
and
tried to find Anna again. It looked for her at every shop and market
and
record store. She wasn’t in the lobbies of any of the buildings.
She
wasn’t in the taxis along any of the curbs. She wasn’t on the
front steps
of any of the museums.
Everywhere, shadows were drifting loose. The shadow of a bus rolled
through a movie theater. The shadow of a house floated on a river.
The
shadow of a purse wandered up a skyscraper. Slowly at first, and then
gathering speed, the shadows of all the people on the street
scattered in a hundred different directions at once. No one could
explain
why, one by one, so many shadows were starting to lose their way.
©2008 by Kevin Frazier
