She was always the outcast, always the one that no one really wanted around because no one knew what to say to her. What do you say to one that had no friends, no family, and nothing in common with you? The kids in elementary school hadn’t known, neither had anyone else.

In all reality she was little more than a shadow, something that could be seen but wasn’t paid any attention to. Why should they pay attention to her? She wasn’t important, she wasn’t ever heard when she spoke save when she answered the random question during class. No one ever listened to her, no one.

Did she even exist? Was she even real or was she just…just a trick of the light? No, for when she fell she bled and when she accidentally brushed up against someone, she avoided human contact whenever possible her skin was solid and warm to the touch. Alas, a living ghost of flesh and blood whom no one saw and to whom no one spoke.

No one knew and no one saw, that her heart, so breakable and vulnerable which got more so as the years progressed, was cut and bleeding riddled with holes that had never healed.

They didn’t try to console her, the little girl with the sad eyes and the drooping lip. Not when her entire life was turned upside down when her father shot her mother and siblings before turning the gun on himself. No one tried to get her out of her shell and no one told her that it was ok to cry because sometimes crying was the only way.

That little ignored girl grew and when she hit womanhood no one was there to show her what to do, no one cared. Everyone was afraid, afraid of the girl with no name that no one cared about and that no one saw.

She grew older yet passed through middle school, not exceptionally smart, not gifted in any way. Perhaps beauty graced her features but she hid them and hid them well with bad posture and loose clothes. The clothes weren’t hers, they were donated by the woman who kept her, not the woman who cared but the woman who kept her and treated her like a pet that had been forgotten. She was clothed and fed but nothing extra, nothing special, never for the shadow girl.

She turned in on to herself, went into her own brain. Made up friends to talk to, friends that were kind and nice, friends that cared but friends that didn’t exist, but they were more friend to her than any at her school.

She talked to them as if they were right there beside her, always and anywhere. It mattered not where. After all, she reasoned, other girls giggled and laughed with their friends all the time, why shouldn’t she?

But then she saw something that was not imaginary, she saw a boy, a real boy and so wonderfully handsome and smart! When she saw the boy, her shadow friends left her, she was on her own, once again the abandoned shadow girl.

But he would never want the shadow girl, no one ever did. She was just a shadow, nothing special, nothing important, just the shadow girl…

Shadow, shadow on the wall
Made of nothing, nothing a’tall
Not a shadow, screams the girl
As with gusto she will hurl
A brick a stone, anything
Can’t they see she’s a human being?
Why won’t they look, why won’t they hear?
What is it about her that makes them fear?
She is just a shadow, nothing to cause fright
And then she suddenly just disappeared into the night.