Poem: What Pain Lies in the Shadows?

What Pain Lies in the Shadows?

What pain lies in the shadows, still and deep,
Where silence folds its wings and dares not sleep?
A whisper held in dusk’s reluctant breath,
The hidden face that wears the mask of death.

It lingers not where laughter finds its flame,
But in the corners, void of light or name,
Where echoes crawl and memories decay,
And time forgets the debt it came to pay.

It speaks in glances, trembles in the bone,
The kind of ache that blooms when you’re alone.
No scream, no wound, just something left unsaid—
A ghost of truths we buried with the dead.

You cannot cast it out with blade or fire,
Nor drown it in the well of your desire.
For pain that dwells in the shadow learns to stay—
It shapes your smile, then slowly walks away.

Yet still it waits, beneath the moonless sky,
To hold your hand when no one else is nigh,
And in that touch, you know it understands—
The quiet hurt that no one else commands.

So let it be, the shadow at your side,
Not friend, not foe, but sorrow’s patient guide.
For though it haunts the paths you cannot flee,
It shows how deep the light must one day be.