Because the instructions said a dark cool place with absolutely no sunlight and because the boy and girl were young enough to believe in shadows, they buried the seeds in a shoebox and the shoebox beneath the basement stairs of her parents’ house. Because the instructions said uninterrupted and six to eight weeks and because the boy and girl were young, they soon forgot about the shoebox and the two seeds planted inside and went about growing up. For years the girl grew up pretty. The boy grew up fast and mean and tired of the girl for a time, as boys sometimes do. The girl’s parents were already grown up, so they grew old and grew out of the girl’s childhood home. The boy would remember the girl sadly. The girl remembered the boy when she moved her parents into a smaller home and found the buried box. Because she remembered when she buried the box with the boy when they both believed in shadows, she opened it. But it had been much too long. The two shadows were grotesquely overgrown and fused into a lopsided pair. The girl didn’t have enough sunlight and wasn’t big enough for two shadows and soon felt the far-off weight of the sad boy. She grew tired, and the boy darkened, and the shadows, because they were shadows, followed.

– Patrick Swaney