Shadow Lines.

Sometimes, I wonder how markings,

random scribbles on a page,

can hold so much meaning.  

I look at a random arch etched into a wall,

insignificant and indecipherable to most people,

and then I remember:

legend has it that one night,

a woman could not sleep

because her lover was going off to war

the very next day.

She spent all night staring at the shadow of his sleeping form,

the dwindling light from the fireplace her only other company.

She grabbed embers from the fire and traced her lover’s shadow into the wall,

the arch hitting the way his belly rises and falls.

In the morning, he will leave,

and his shadow will go along with him.

But these lines,

here they will stay.