My shadow lives on vine-covered walls.

My shadow lives on vine-covered walls.

It stretches before me on the sidewalks I travel, everywhere I go.

It’s much like every other shadow, I think: at once ordinary, commonplace, beneath notice—and also completely unique to me and the slant of each passing hour’s sunlight.

My shadow disappears at night, except when the moon shines.
There are artificial shadows, weirdly colored, cast by streetlamps and shop lights. False shadows.

At night, my real shadow sometimes curls up in a bottle of cabernet sauvignon that I might, unsuspecting, uncork and drink.

I sip my shadow in with the earthy dark red wine and sometimes— when the moon is in a certain phase, when certain molecules of my brain are swelling like an answering tide—my swallowed shadow slips free like a ghost and wanders the winding path of my bloodstream, staining my thoughts like a fat drop of wine splattered on a sweater, a drop that spreads out and changes the color of everything.