shadow

THEIR SPOT ON THE HILL, 100 WORD STORY

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The light was losing itself to shadow.
Only a suggestion remained of what had once been.
The seas and the seasons had taken the rest.

He struggled up the hill.
He stood again, after all the years, on their spot,
on the whips of life tenting up through the dead grasses as the ruins watched him.

She’d been 19 when he asked her to marry him there.
She’d worn her mother’s perfume and a smile.

He’d only been 17 but he’d found all he’d ever needed.

Goodbye, he cried into the shadow of the day as he released her ashes.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Photograph of Dunure Castle along the South Ayrshire coastline in Scotland.

NOT QUITE RIGHT

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You swept into the shadows
of all that once was, last night,
like a blur upon the light,
not quite right,
not quite.
I’d slept beneath his covers
after he’d taken off, one night
and you’d caught me in your sight
hoping that I might
well, quite.
You’d found me in a rainstorm
as Christmas day became christmas night
and I the gift that you could bite
as anybody might
and you were right.
I fucked you in his absence
as if to be alone would not be right
and who was I to fight
the stranger in the night,
all right.
You watched me as I slumbered
tangled up beside you, that night
as if you’d somehow seen the light
of all that wasn’t right,
well, not quite.
I left you in the morning
before attachments grew too tight,
before the morning shed its light
on all that wasn’t right,
not quite right.
I left you in the morning
but wondered what occurred that night
when he was back in your embrace, behind the light,
I wondered if you made it back to right,
like you’d felt with me that night
when everything seemed right,
well, not quite.

All Words and Drawing by Damien B. Donnelly

SHADOW AND LIGHT

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At 22,
I knew as much of myself
As the exotic world
I’d just found
With streets willing me
To walk them
Witness them
And be wooed by them.
My twenties
Had typically emerged
As a decade to be a no one;
An empty slate to be carved upon
Before my thirties would find me
And shout me with substance.

I’d lost parents
Before knowing them; given up
In a sacrifice of selflessness
Almost incomprehensible
And found
In the arms of another mother
A love that would prove
Incontestable.

I searched,
During infantile years,
Amid childish ego
And innocence,
For connections
To those around me;
The mother
Loved so unequivocally
And the father
Aged in aggression,
With a gap too great to bridge
And so I turned to walk
Shadowy miles of roads in my head,
Clumsily cramming teenage years
With classically confusing
Childish dribble,
Trying to sound like a grown-up
In size 6 shoes,
Feeling different,
Unknown,
And, more often than not,
Undiscovered.

Finally,
I braved knocks on dark doors-
Frequented bars in back lanes
And alley ways,
Away from the eyes of the pious
Whose ignorance
Bullied the boys
With different desires.
I kissed
My first boy
At 18
Behind a sofa
As excited as a child
On Christmas morning,
Finding courage
Behind shades and acceptance
In a community I had become
No longer
Soul member of.

Cuddling and kissing progressed,
Over time, to sweaty,
Fumbling, amateur athletics
Behind the lights
Replacing shame and catholic guilt
With newfound feelings of freedom
As I began
To notch my way
Onto bedposts
Of various conquests.

Between courtings
I often cried
For lovers in whose arms
I should never have laid
And wondered why I ran
From others in whose embrace
I should have stayed,
All but memories
Patterned into the tissue
Of my sleeve-worn,
Still learning, heart,
Cherished moments
That wished to be relived
Along with others
That longed for time to fade.

I had assumed these
To be bruises
As I fell upon these new
Foreign streets
But have recognised them since
To be no more than lifelines,
Imprints, echoes merely of
Shadow and light.

They were all
Important diversions
Along the road,
Pivotal points
Goading me
Into this very direction.
Some of them
Fell away by your banks
And others settled in,
Ingrained themselves like streets
That mapped themselves
Out in front of me
And gradually,
Over time,
Carved their way
Indelibly
Inside of me.

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ALONG THE WAYSIDE

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Subdued by circumstance,
Sitting soulfully
In the shadow
Of uncertainty
As situations
Settle themselves
Into scenes played out
Beyond reach of understanding
Or certitude,
I succumb
To the subtle shifts
In atmospherical changes,
Accept the silences
As essential escapism
And shake
In the fallouts from storms
Rained down only
In the calmest corners of the day
As if to test me
And my corroding composure
And question my ability
To remain neutral
As trying themes
Surround me
Without
Directly involving me.

I am the shadow dancer,
Tip toeing over egg shells,
Fighting with a past
That won’t break
With the present
And a present
Too preoccupied
To see the future.

Subdued by circumstance,
Sitting somberly
In the shadow
Of insecurity
As untended wounds
Rise up before me
To cut and criticize me,
Judging me
From a position
Of misperceived perfection.

I have seen,
Before,
The light
And glow
Of a smile
And recognise it now,
Off in the distance,
Lost to the moment,
And worry
How to tempt it home,
To a home that is both
Too new
To be recognisable
And too soon made
To prove enough.

The dust,
Previously formed,
Has not settled
And yet we busy ourselves
Shifting the furniture
Of our current lives,
Sometimes aligned,
Sometimes bumping,
Sometimes
Trying to fit
The clumsiest of cupboards
Into the smallest of spaces.

Only time will tell
What fits where,
What will survive
And what will be
Surrendered
Somewhere,
Somehow,
Along the wayside.

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AMATEUR STATUS

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November rains in the park-
Trying to be an artist,
Attempting to capture it all
In a quiet corner
Behind the trees,
Away from the winds,
Beyond eyeshot from anything daring,
Sheltered in a huddle instead of in the midst of adventure.

I thought I had found myself
But it was safe fake lies;
Pacifying the ego,
Trying to paint a Picasso
With colourless pencils.
Frozen by mid-afternoon,
Not suffering for art
But merely suffocating
In all that surrounded me
That I wanted to be part of but knew not where to begin.

I sat in your garden
And sketched you
Devoid of feeling and life,
I failed that day to capture
Or even comprehend you
But hung you on my wall
Nonetheless, as if to remind myself
Of all I still had to do-
I needed to paint you from within
And not just with colours sketched from the tips of my fingers.

Your multi-layered canvas
Was a daunting place to start
For my amateur attempts
At early adventure,
I was only dabbling
In shadow and shade;
Lightless and lifeless,
Playing with untapped possibilities
And dreamed-of doings
Instead of head-on,
Opened-up, fearless, dive-into, unknown experiences.

One million options beneath my feet
Waiting to be walked
And I picked the solitary seat,
On a Saturday afternoon,
In a secluded setting of your park
That stretched for miles
And bloomed with life all around me-
But not beside me,
But not for me, not with me.
I was as lifeless
As the painting I had sketched-
Fast movement needed
Least winter winds would wipe me forgotten before begun.

All words and drawings by Damien B. Donnelly