There's this picture nailed into the back of my mind. It's a picture without him in it.
Everything seems so much brighter now that she has her smile back.
You see, he stole that smile, and hid it in the stars.
And without that smile, she wandered around with no true sense of direction or happiness.
Lost.
No one could seem to find her.
Even on the brightest of days.
But now that his shadow has been lifted from that great big fiery ball in the sky, she has found her way back home.
And the stars returned her smile. Not for the lack of luster, but only for the reason that the sky isn't ready to hold such beauty yet.
And now that her smile has been reinstated, so has mine.
Because now, the feeling of being close to her isn't just a memory anymore.
The shadow man isn't keeping her locked up anymore.
She doesn't have to plead with him anymore.
She doesn't have to beg to be loved the way she wants to anymore.
Because she found her voice again.
The one that cried out to him in the dead of night.
The one that he heard, but never listened to.
That one that he tied a rock to, and sank in the deepest part of the ocean.
And she had to fight off sharks just to get it back.
She may have come back with cuts and bruises, but she got it back.
And once she removed the shadow man from her life,
she sewed her smile back on,
and she gargled with her voice until it stuck inside her throat.
The shadow man is still a shadow.
But now, a shadow, she is not.
