In a bed by the Gulf of Corinth, a woman contemplates by firelight the profile of her sleeping lover.
On the wall, his shadow flickers.
The lover, who lies by her side, will leave. At dawn he will leave to war, to death. And his shadow, his traveling companion, will leave with him and with him will die.
It is still dark. The woman takes a coal out of the embers and draws the out line of his shadow.
Those lines will not leave.
They will not embrace her, and she knows it. But they will not leave.
-- From Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano (tr. Mark Fried). Listen, also, to his treasure of an interview on KCRW's Bookworm
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