To feel unreal is to drift through existence like a phantom-untethered from time, watching but never quite touching. Suspended between presence and absence, seen yet intangible. This collection of poetry navigates identity, survival, absurdity, and the spaces where reality blurs.
With sharp imagery, haunting introspection, and darkly wry humor, A Shadow Without a Body unravels the myths of healing, the illusion of stability, and the pull between longing and detachment. These poems trace the weight of mental illness, the echoes of self-loss, and the quiet contradiction of wanting to disappear while yearning to be seen.
Caught between waiting rooms and fogged mirrors, between recognition and erasure, between tethered and adrift-a life shaped by paradox, where certainty is a mirage and the only certainty is contradiction itself.
A Shadow Without a Body is a testament to the unspoken, the unsaid, and the inexplicably strange. It does not promise answers-only the possibility that absence is not the end. That even in the silence between heartbeats, something lingers. That even in our worst moments, something resists disappearing.
Excerpt:
"I am everything:
The autumn winds easing the leaves away from their branches,
A baby's smile at daddy's funny face,
The tears that seep into the soil at a funeral,
A heavy snowfall on Christmas Eve.
I am a hug:
Offered only during times of sadness,
Never given often enough.
I am a mirror:
Reflecting the moods of those in my surroundings
Or the inanimate objects that remain once all have gone home.
I am a microphone:
Echoing the opinions of those around me,
Telling the truths of all, but only being accepted by one.
I am a shell:
Full of the many memories of yesterday,
Unable to grasp anything today.
I am a skeleton:
Stripped away of any feeling,
After everyone has taken a piece.
I am nothing:
Not a firefighter,
Thanked for saving the family pet.
Not a lover,
Dearly missed by her significant other.
Not a role model,
Written about for a second grader's project.
Not a person at all;
I am a simple cadaver, sliced up for answers to all of life's questions."
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An original poetry collection from the last decade of my life.