The shadow that made me

I built myself from things denied, Hung holy masks across the night. “I am this,” I carved in stone Then buried everything unknown. But underneath my sacred name, Something whispered all the same: You are the things you cast away. I am the price your “I” must pay. Every boundary has a wound, Every light creates a room Where something darker must remain The thing you bury bears your name. I am the shadow that I severed, The face beneath the face. The exile from my kingdom, The god I could not embrace. I said, “I am not you,” And drew the border wide But everything I cast into the dark Was waiting on the other side. The Tree grows branches toward the light, But roots descend into the night. The Qliphoth wears the shape of what The holy self declares is not. Every virtue casts a twin, Every purity conceals a sin. The crown becomes a prison wall, And what we exile knows us all. You cannot cut away the night Without defining what is light. Every “yes” conceals a “no.” Every self requires a ghost. I am the shadow that I severed, The face beneath the face. The exile from my kingdom, The god I could not embrace. I said, “I am not you,” And drew the border wide But everything I cast into the dark Was waiting on the other side. Jung called it Shadow. The mystics called it exile. The Qliphoth calls from beneath the Tree. But what if the monster was never something beneath me? What if it was the part of me that made “me” possible? What if the Devil wears my face because I gave him every face I couldn’t bear to see? I rejected the hunger It became my hunger. I rejected the rage It became my rage. I rejected the darkness It learned my name. I rejected the Shadow And became its cage. I am the shadow that I severed, The wound beneath the crown. The part of me I buried That never stayed underground. I thought I had to conquer it, I thought I had to kill But the thing I called my enemy Was part of me still. There is no self without the other. No light without the shade. The Tree reaches toward heaven because its roots embrace the grave. So I open the door. I call the Shadow by its name. And for the first time it does not look like darkness. It looks like me.