Frozen Shadows

There was a children’s museum I used to visit (as a child, obviously).  I remember only a few things from there – one of which was the dissection of a cow’s eyeball (gross).  Another time there were huge wire frames which made massive rainbow-colored balloons.  One thing that crept back into recent memory was the freeze-frame shadow images.  Several of us would go into the small, dark tunnel (not as creepy as it sounds), outfitted with bare walls and hidden strobes (still, not as creepy as it sounds).  My sister or cousins and I would act out our silliest poses, or jump into the air, aiming perfectly for the “pop” of the flash behind us.  The result was a lasting image cast on the opposite wall – a shadow frozen in time and action. Logic and learning have informed me that this was the result of a high-powered strobe stimulating a phosphorescent wall or photosensitive plates.  The child in me still marvels at “frozen shadows”.

This is what I exist as now – a frozen shadow.  Something that should follow me, but doesn’t.  Something that represents me in only one dimension, containing none of the unique, colorful features that identify me.  Something that is jerked into existence, then gradually fades into its surroundings.  I feel like I leave a part of me everywhere I go – a little piece of me that was either pregnant when I last visited, or visited in the height of our grief and is now emotionally tied to that place.  I make an imprint, but it doesn’t last.  As soon as it is captured, it begins to die.  I was here, but now I’m not, and the part of me that was is fading fast.  Coraline was here, and now she’s not, and sometimes she feels so distant, so past-tense.

I wonder what my shadow would look like now.  Would there be a gaping hole where my heart was, since my chest feels like it's caving in?  Or an empty space which she once filled in my womb?  Maybe a huge blank spot in my head, to signify the confusion of having every thought at once.  At any rate, I wish I could return to those innocent days, when I ran around and laughed with my friends, and was not aware how quickly everything you love could be taken from you in an instant.