The poet is never alone. Even in empty rooms, even in the pause between breaths, something follows—low to the ground, faithful, unfinished. It moves when the poet moves and waits when the poet waits, a dark companion made of everything that could not be said out loud. This is where the unspeakable rests. This is where truth takes off its manners.

The shadow understands silence better than language ever could. It collects what the poet drops: abandoned metaphors, half-formed prayers, memories still warm from regret. It keeps them close, pressed into its shape, and at night it returns them gently, like a hand on the chest reminding the poet they are still alive.

Words do not come from clarity. They rise from pressure. From the place where love once stood and then didn’t. From the quiet fracture of faith that never fully heals but learns how to bear weight. The poet writes because the shadow insists—because something inside refuses erasure.

The shadow carries what daylight would interrogate. It knows which truths would cost too much, which confessions would scorch the air if spoken plainly. So it bears them instead, a private gravity, allowing the poet to move through the world appearing whole while everything necessary trembles just out of sight.

Sometimes the poet turns and tries to face it, hoping for distance, for relief, for the mercy of separation. But the brighter the light, the longer the shadow grows. This is the cruel tenderness of it: pain is not proof of darkness, but of having stood in something luminous long enough to be changed.

In time, the poet learns the shadow is not an enemy. It is a witness. A living archive of all that was felt too deeply to disappear. And when the poet is gone, it will linger for a breath longer, holding the outline of a soul that dared to leave meaning behind in the dark.

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