A picture with no shadows in it
Has all too much to hide.
Pompous, plushy, prickly colors
Wherein no truth resides.

I take my prickly marker and
Color the shadows in.
Big, ballooning Important Ones,
Others long and thin.

My marker is a special one

(I wish it didn’t belong to me),

Drawing stark and bloated shadows

That only I can see.

Sometimes I point them out to others!
I try to hurt my sisters and brothers.
Most of the time I can’t get another
To see one shadow.

The picture is lively without the shadows --
A proud white lighthouse abiding over his jurisdiction of plain white sand.

Green prickly cactuses and green prickly buzzards-
No! Moss and seagulls.
Those aren’t shadows...
Sometimes, I’m flying blind and others have to describe the picture to me.

But I can still see the shadows.

A gentle breeze; a lapping wave;
A salty spray; a crackly cave;
Two gentle trees; a lapping dog;
A salty coconut in its crackly shell;
The Star, a jovial ambrosian nectar of-
OK, I can’t see anymore.

What I’ve come to realize is that the picture I can see is actually more beautiful, more profound, more heart-wrenching than I or anyone else could have imagined a few years ago;

But, I’m still afraid of being alone in the dark.