It’s hard being a shadow,

especially though I tell myself

I’m not an illusion,

that the ghost in me

that is ignored,

that is playfully abandoned

from time to time

exists and feels pain like a Winter’s breath

on a fading scar,

rising with pinched assault

and damnation in the dead

of lost cause night…

I am not an illusion,

a conjured trick of morphine,

a dream,

a nightmare that an addict once had

in bleak black and white stereotype,

the noir in the film…