LJ Idol Season 7, Week 1 - Winding Up.
I stalk past a warehouse that I wish were mine, and hum the chorus of "Richard Cory". My long leather trenchcoat billows behind me; my frizzy silver mane is a flag to match it. The shadow I cast in the waning autumn afternoon would suggest invincibility to a casual observer.
Shadows sometimes lie.
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We used to call him Captain. He lived up against a retaining wall of an underpass that intersected an elevated train line. His ubiquitous ankle-length coat had epaulets; he would have had cut a dashing figure had he not reeked of booze and filth and excrement. His unkempt hair reached his shoulders and flared around his head in unexpected tufts.
His shadow was more handsome than he.
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My past has a shadow; in its wake lies homelessness, nights at bars looking for a safe place to stay, uncertainties of what tomorrow would bring. Many tomorrows have passed since then, but those shadows still dog me. My shadow could be Captain's shadow, and his fate could have been mine.
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I wend my way further up and further into the neighborhood. I turn the corner onto my street. I turn the key in the lock of a place that's all my own.
I take off my coat and shut the shadows out, but I don't forget how I could have wound up.