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Written after seeing Simon O’Connor in Beckett’s Company, as part of the Dunedin Arts Festival. A pastiche, certainly, but the rhythms were infectious, and this seemed the best way to get them out of my head.

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Shadows dissolve at the edges first. Begin there. With dissolution, fraying. The centre holds longest, though what constitutes this centre shifts. Yesterday it was the silhouette against the kitchen wall. Today the particular angle of darkness beneath the lamp. Tomorrow perhaps nothing but the sensation of absence.

Sitting at the table counting shadows. Eleven visible to the naked eye. More surely hidden in corners. In crevices. Residue of morning. Of presence. Evidence someone moved here and then moved elsewhere. What precision in such counting. What purpose. The morning stretches into afternoon while rain taps.

Count again. Ten. One lost or consumed by shifting light. Perhaps a cloud passing. Perhaps the counter’s own movement disturbing the arrangement. Perhaps simple error. The margins of error expand with time. With each counting. Each remembering. Yesterday there were twenty-three shadows. Or was it twenty? Or was it yesterday?

The chair still angled as though recently vacated. How strange to outlive moments. To remain while they depart. The self a container somehow both leaking and collecting simultaneously. Through what mechanism? By what natural law?

Someone whispers from another room. No one whispers from another room. Propositions carry equal weight. The first requires another presence. The second confirms solitude. Between these propositions a life unfolds or has unfolded or will unfold. Time becomes suspect in such environments.

Eyes closed against sunlight arriving too direct through east-facing windows. Through the red screen of eyelids a shadow forms. Dissolves. Forms again. Moving from one room to other room. The outline of arms swinging. Hair catching light. Precise and imprecise simultaneously. The contours absolute. The details fluid.

Was the shadow taller then? Was it autumn? Memory offers contradictory evidence. An elongated darkness stretching across leaves. A compact midday absence in heat. A diffuse grey against winter white. All equally vivid. Equally suspect. The self unreliable even to itself. Especially itself.

Nine shadows now. The count diminishes while attention wanders. Time functions thus. Erosion through inattention. The slow dissolve. The quiet subtraction. Each moment taking something with it when it goes. Each moment leaving something behind when it goes. The mathematics of memory impenetrable.

Weather changes while the table remains. While the counter remains. While the count continues. Rain becomes snow becomes sunshine becomes night. Through the window stars arrange themselves into familiar patterns. Or the eyes arrange stars into familiar patterns. Perception altering the perceived. Memory altering the remembered.

A shadow moves across the wall carrying the suggestion of hands. No shadow moves. Both equally possible. Both equally impossible. Schrödinger’s silhouette, Schrödinger’s memory. Until observed, all exist simultaneously. Until remembered, all exist simultaneously. Choose one. Choose carefully. Chosen becomes briefly real.

Long shadow across the table beside shorter ones. Black against wood grain. Against white plate. Against steel utensils. The shape precise though the source eludes. Lamp? Plant? Some other object whose name slips away? Names fade first sometimes. Sometimes last. No predictable order to this dissolution.

Voice from another room calls a name. What name? Whose voice? Ears register vibration without meaning. Sound without sense. The self fragmented enough to hear but not comprehend. To recognise but not identify. To know but not know it knows.

Count the shadows again. Seven. The diminishment accelerates. Soon nothing will remain but the counter. Then perhaps not even that. Count anyway. Count especially then. Enumeration against disappearance. Quantification against dissolution. Numbers the last language when all others fail.

The long shadow shrinks as the sun rises higher. Pulling into itself like a closing door. Like a final statement. Shadows retreat with such precision. Such attention to process. Memory might learn from this. Might practice such deliberate closure. Such intentional ending. Instead memory stutters. Repeats. Contradicts. Opens when it should close.

Her shadow fell across this threshold exactly fourteen times. Or twelve. Or twenty. The number matters and doesn’t matter. The fact of her shadow remains. The threshold remains. The counter remains counting darknesses crossed or not crossed. Entrances. Exits. Spaces between presence and absence.

Night deepens around the table. Around the counter. Around the count. Darkness flowing into corners first then expanding. Taking the room inch by inch. Taking the distinct shadows. Blending them into single obscurity. Leaving only the counter illuminated by some internal light. Some residual brightness. Memory function as evolutionary advantage. The ability to see what isn’t there keeping us alive when nothing is.

Breath makes clouds in cold air. Evidence of continuing. Of process uninterrupted. How strange to produce such ephemeral proof. Temporary testimony. The body insisting on itself moment by moment. Cloud after cloud. Breath after breath. Count these too if shadows fail.

Morning arrives without fanfare. Without ceremony. Light replacing darkness. Simple physics. Earth’s rotation. Processes indifferent to the counter or his count. Shadows now three. The longest one nowhere visible. Perhaps moved by shifting light. Perhaps by the counter himself during some forgotten interval. Perhaps it never existed except as mental fabrication.

Her shadow will not fall here today. This fact solid as the table. As the chair. As the three remaining shadows. She will not interrupt light tomorrow. Will not appear. These facts building upon each other. Creating structure through absence. Architecture through negation.

Light shifts from another window. The counter rises to attend to it though no memory exists of curtains being drawn. Of blinds being adjusted. Of decision to alter illumination. Actions performed by some other aspect of self. Some autonomous function continuing while the counting mind counts. While the remembering mind remembers or fails to remember.

A new shadow appears on the wall. Count begins again. One. Two. Three. Four. Shadows remaining. Smaller now. Diminished by noon or by clouds gathering or by natural erosion. Count anyway. Count especially then.