The Missing Shadow

Sometimes life throws you curveballs

Mr. Calworth discovered one Tuesday morning that his shadow had moved out.

He noticed the absence while brushing his teeth. The floor behind him was blank—just tile, sunlight, and an unsettling sense of vacancy, like someone had erased a sentence from a paragraph he hadn’t written yet.

He checked everywhere a reasonable man would look:
under the bed, behind the curtains, inside the refrigerator (twice, because the light changes when the door opens), and in the pockets of last week’s trousers.
Nothing.

The note on the kitchen table didn’t help much.
It read:

Gone visiting.
Please water the fern.
—S.

Mr. Calworth did not own a fern.

Still, he bought one out of politeness.

For the next several days, he went about his routines accompanied only by the faint suspicion that someone was walking exactly one second behind him. When he turned around, he found nothing—just the air rearranging itself like a guilty dog.

On Friday, his shadow sent a postcard.

The picture showed a lighthouse standing in the middle of a desert, beaming a spotlight toward a horizon that didn’t look big enough to deserve one.
The message on the back said:

Trying to find a place where light makes sense.
Wish you were here, but also don’t.
—S.

Mr. Calworth didn’t know how to interpret that, so he made tea.

That evening, while he was washing the mug, his shadow slipped back in through the open window, casual as you please. It stretched across the floor, yawned, and settled into its usual position as if nothing unusual had occurred.

“You’re back,” Mr. Calworth said.

His shadow gave no reply, because shadows are famously stubborn conversationalists.

But later, when he switched off the lights, he felt it give a small, companionable nudge—just enough to say yes.

The next morning, a fully grown fern stood beside the sink.

He watered it without asking questions.