Discovery.

I have discovered – or rather, I have allowed myself to be swept away by the discovery – that one does not fall in love with what one can touch, but precisely with that which is always just a fraction away, a sliver, an echo of yourself, the contour that is outlined in the light and yet is simultaneously born in the dark, a shadow that lets itself be followed willingly as long as you do not try to look it straight in the eye, for then it flees, growing thinner, distant, almost mocking in its elusiveness, and the stronger the light that calls it to life, the sharper it draws itself, the more painfully clear it presents itself, and the more impossible it becomes to actually reach it, for the distance between myself and my own extension grows the closer I want to get, as if love itself were a paradox, a game that one can never win.

And I, wandering through rooms where lamps flicker and the sun breaks through curtains, chase my own desire, always thinking I’m about to seize it—yes, it, for I’ve given my shadow a feminine face, a body that moves with an independence I don’t possess—and always I’m left with an empty hand, an outstretched arm, a breath that touches nothing but air and more air, and I get lost in the thought that perhaps following the shadow, chasing this unattainable silhouette, is more than enough, perhaps even the essence of all love: desire itself as the goal, not its fulfillment.

But then night comes, and I stand on a street where the lampposts fail, or in a room where the curtain cuts off everything, and I see nothing, no outline, no evidence of that beloved who lay beneath my feet a moment ago, and then the world collapses, for how do you love something that doesn’t exist in the dark, how do you remain faithful to a form that only appears when there is light, and what happens when the refrigerator door closes and the light goes out, am I then shadowless, shadow-bare, am I a being without a beloved, am I merely flesh without an extension?

And I wander, and I forget where I began, as if my thoughts themselves were a labyrinth, corridors that twist and turn and lead me ever further, and perhaps that is the only way to tell this story: by losing the thread more and more, because love for a shadow is never straight, it is tortuous, it makes you stumble over your own desire and it is precisely in that stumbling that you recognize the truth: that your shadow is always closer and further away at the same time, that you always almost have it and will never fully possess it, and that perhaps the most intense loves are the loves that you never embrace, but always see dancing just ahead of you, in the light, in the sun, or on the bare floor of a kitchen lit briefly by a refrigerator light, that little star of electricity, and that, as soon as it goes out, leaves you with nothing but the memory of an outline.

And yet I keep longing.