shadow 

i do not believe in underworlds
though i might be one.
i turn off all the lights 
in my apartment at night-- feel my way
down the hall to my bed room.
in bed, i find myself, laying 
& staring up at the ceiling.
eyes glass & pried open. 
close the lids. tell her to sleep.
all the walls here are white.
when i was little i used to want
to paint my bedroom black
but my dad said the room world shrink.
i want a smaller den. the darkness becomes
a kind of language. when Jung talks about
the shadow, does he mean 
the way i can look in the mirror 
& see eighteen of us, standing deeper
& deeper? or, maybe he means
how lately i can walk into a room over & over 
without any idea why i arrived.
i should be more careful
with peeling apart. everything is water
when you get down to it.
dip your feet in me. my shadow 
is often a girl's shadow. my shadow sometimes
eats the bones of snakes.
once i caught my shadow laughing
& i told him to swallow whatever it was
he thought was so funny. 
find clams in the bathtub.
someone is always awake. what should we do
with our faces? i'm setting mine
in a pool of salt for safe keeping.
i kind of want to be psychoanalyzed.
what would they find wrong with me?
it was probably my childhood of
glass & tree trunks. that's why 
i'm a boy. my shadow gets hungry 
in the middle of the night.
sulks to a corner & stands there.
good. leave me alone. 
always the feeling someone is
inching up behind you. 
i turn to check i'm alone.