Shadow Work

“How can I be substantial 

if I do not cast a shadow?”

Carl Jung 

Shadow Work

I have carried a light

too carefully 

as if brightness alone

could prove I was whole 

But every man

who stands in the sun

casts a shape behind him—

a dark echo 

a second truth 

My shadow keeps

what I tried to forget:

the anger I softened

into silence 

the fear I dressed

as competence 

the desire I buried

under duty 

It holds the versions of me

I never let breathe 

the instincts I hid —

a self-imposed silence 

born of the lie 

of being unbecoming 

To deny them 

is to fracture myself 

to live as a polished half 

instead of a full 

complicated body 

So I turn toward the dim places

and let them speak 

They do not threaten me 

They complete me 

I gather the bright moments

and the difficult ones 

the wounds and the wisdom 

the tenderness and the teeth—

and I let them stand together

in the same light 

Only then

do I become substantial 

Only then

do I cast a true shadow 

Only then 

© Ron Simpson Jr. 

August 17, 2026

Lying Eyes

We don’t see things as they are;

we see them as we are.

Anaïs Nin 

Lying Eyes

I know you see 

what I am seeing 

but we are not seeing 

the same thing 

I cannot see 

through your eyes—

only through the lattice 

of my own life 

my accumulated wounds 

my carefully engineered convictions 

Our sight is a kind of polarization 

a fracture born from lying eyes 

And as I try to explain my view 

my mind knots itself 

around the question

of how you cannot see 

what I see 

There are three visions 

in every moment:

your view, my view,

and the imagined right view 

You don’t need to see 

through my lying eyes 

I don’t need to see 

through yours 

What we need—

what we keep pretending exists—

is a pair of unbiased eyes 

But that lens is a myth 

and we are not likely to find it 

We keep reaching 

for the clean lens 

the one without fingerprints 

the one that promises truth 

without the burden 

of who we are 

But every lens 

is smudged 

by the hands 

that hold it 

© Ron Simpson Jr. 

August 12, 2026 

Older Eyes

The past is never where 

you think you left it — 

Katherine Anne Porter 

Older Eyes

Looking back

with older eyes,

I see the lies

braided into memory 

I see old events

tilt and shift 

their angles changed

by the years 

The person

who lived those moments

is gone now —

though fragments of him

still breathe

in what I remember 

I walk through rooms

I once lived in 

but the furniture

has moved 

The light falls differently 

The shadows

no longer match

the stories 

I told myself 

Some days

I open a drawer

and find a version of me

I forgot I’d hidden — 

a stubborn belief 

a wound I swore

had healed 

a joy I didn’t know

I missed 

Memory is not a ledger

keeping score 

It is a tide

that drags pieces of us

forward and back 

reshaping the shoreline

of who we think we are 

History

is not an old box

shoved into an attic 

It is a living thing

that revises itself

with every breath 

It moves 

It mutters 

It walks beside us

whether we notice

or not —

reminding us

that the past

is never where

we think we left it 

© Ron Simpson Jr. 

August 16, 2026