shadow on the wall

fig. Hernan Marin

They told me the stranger that lives in my house doesn't exist at all, that I'm simply paranoid.

That's no stranger, I tell them. You're no stranger to me. You exist in the shadows that fall long, against the floor of my bedroom. I can feel you simply watching over me as I eat, brush, and sleep.

Sometimes your watching feels like love to me.

We've lived together so long, I've started to talk to you when there's nobody else around. You've started to reply. 

Some nights I can hear your soft breathing as you watch me sleep, other nights your footsteps scare me in the kitchen as they did when I was simply a child. 

When I tell them, they put me on medication and you go away and I miss and miss and miss you until I'm in tears. And so I flush the pills down the toilet so you can come back to life again, have breakfast with me again, dance in the dark of my living room again, twirling slowly with me. Only a shadow on the wall, but so much more to me. 

We've been together so long, I wonder if you're part of me now. Some lonely nights, they tell me you are. They tell me you need to go away now, that I need to let you go. They don't understand, these silly old people with their glasses and their big books.

You kept me company when I was little, you hid with me when I ran from the belt and when I cowered from the rage. 

You keep me company now, as I crawl into fetal position on the bathroom floor, sobbing until I can't feel my hands no more. You stay there and you breathe softly until my heartbeat turns steady.

I owe so much of my life to you. And, in a way, perhaps you owe all of your life to me.

Why would I need to let you go? I love you so.