Your Shadow

Five in the morning, when you
stumble out of bed to go and pee
then peek between the curtains
at the weather (blue enough),
there’s the shadow of this house
projected on the white façade
of the pretty house opposite,
like glimpsing your own shadow
on the face of a stranger facing you –
the shape of your sameness,
your difference, the disjunction…

Waking later to a sun higher
in the sky, dissolving everything
in frothing seaside light,
you walk along the shore and,
startled, see it still – that lovely,
unexpected shadow follows you.

—
Jean Morris lives in London, takes photos, translates from French and Spanish, and surprised herself last year by seriously getting into poetry. She most recently had some micro-poems published in Otata.