Folding Shadows — Iwan Lee
I first met Mark at the shelter, on a Thursday that was quiet in that strange way right after the evening rush. The sun had just dropped below the rooftop outside the window, so the sky looked muddled—ash and rose at the same time. Most volunteers had trickled out after serving dinner. I stayed behind. Not for some deep reason, just needed to finish my hours.
Mark was at the window, shoulders hunched. The streetlight outside had just blinked on. He wore an Army jacket frayed at the edges, sleeves shoved up above his elbows. Word was he’d served in Afghanistan, and everyone somehow respected that without asking questions. The topic hovered at the edges, unspoken.
I hesitated for a second before moving closer with a bin of towels. Funny, how some people carry so much weight, you notice it before they even talk.
He didn’t look over, but broke the silence.
“You ever… been somewhere, and it felt like you left a piece of yourself there?”
I stopped, confused.
“Like… a place you miss?”
He shook his head. “No, not missing. I mean a place that broke something in you, so when you left, the broken piece got left behind. But it’s crazy, it still hurts anyway.”
Maybe if I’d been older, I’d have said something smart. But I was fourteen, and heartbreak to me was not getting invited to a friend’s birthday party, or losing Pancho—the dog I’d had since I was a baby—just a few weeks earlier. I still wasn’t used to coming home and not hearing his paws on the floor. At home, we called him The King of the Floor.
The question hung between us. I just kept folding.
Eventually, he turned my way. His eyes looked hollow, like he’d forgotten how to blink.
“Two tours… overseas,” he finally said, voice flat. “Lost some good men. Think I lost myself, too.”
He tapped the side of his head. “My body came back. Some other parts—didn’t.”
A staff member glided past in the hallway, calling for someone. I don’t remember who.
“I sleep by the back door, near the mats,” he told me, almost like apologizing. “Used to have a bed. Had a daughter, a wife… Sometimes pain stiffens you into someone your people can’t recognize. So they leave. Or you leave. Doesn’t really make a difference after a while.”
He picked up one of the towels, and started folding. There was something shaky about his hands that made me slow down, too.
“Funny,” he muttered. “Folding towels… it’s like putting chaos away. Makes me think, maybe if I fold enough, I’ll fit back together, too.”
For another few minutes, neither of us said anything. It wasn’t an empty silence. More like… full of everything we couldn’t put words to.
“You’re young,” he spoke up at last. “You don’t belong here.”
I shrugged, kind of. “Just wanted to help, I guess.”
He managed a half-smile, small, but real. “Then maybe there’s hope for the rest of us, if you’re here.”
***
Days bled together after that, each shift blurring into the next. I kept coming back—partly for him, partly for myself, and at first, for the hours. Mark sometimes talked, sometimes just gazed out the window, or folded towels across from me, the space between us becoming comfortable.
One slow afternoon, he dug a faded photograph from his wallet.
“She’s my daughter,” he whispered. “Doubt she even remembers now.”
I took the photo and felt the edge, ragged under my thumb.
Didn’t know what to say.
“It’s not only war,” he said, voice thin. “It’s losing the little parts of your life that kept you anchored.”
***
On my last shift that month, Mark was outside under a nearly bare tree, jacket zipped too high against the cold. Autumn felt mean that year.
“You know about the twenty-two?” he asked, not looking at me.
I shook my head.
He sighed. “Twenty-two vets… every damn day. People think the war kills us. Truth is, most of us die after we’re back home.”
He stared at his hands, tracing a line in the concrete with one finger.
“It’s not the bullets,” he said, low. “It’s what you drag home—the guilt, the memories. The shadows that don’t quit, even when you think you’re fine.”
***
He left the shelter a week later. No warning, no note. I searched for him—maybe even just out of habit—but he was gone.
Every so often, I catch myself thinking about Mark—the way he sat so still, or how he folded towels like they mattered more than anything. Sometimes I think about all the others out there: lost, silent, invisible in the cracks we don’t bother to look at. Sleeping beside their shadows. Waking up to silence. Disappearing before anyone even notices.
Just before I left, he said something I can’t forget:
“Some things… you can’t say out loud. Doesn’t mean they ever go away.”
***
I still wonder if he ever got a night free from those shadows. If, even once, the hurt slipped away for long enough that he could breathe again.
I don’t know if talking to me changed anything for Mark. But it changed me for sure. I used to think trauma always looked loud—shouting, sobbing, falling apart. But I’ve learned it’s often the quieter things: the way someone folds a towel, the silence you share, the way someone vanishes and no one asks why, the little cracks you don’t notice until they’ve grown too wide to cross.
We only notice the shadows when they’re leaning close, whispering.
And by the time we do, I wonder if it’s already too late.
Iwan Lee is a writer from New Jersey. His work has been recognized by The New York Times, Scholastic Writing Awards, and Stone Soup Magazine. He currently serves as a Junior Editor at Polyphony Lit. In 2025, he was one of 26 young poets selected worldwide for Polyphony Lit’s Poetry-on-Demand Marathon, with the anthology published on Amazon. Two of his works are also forthcoming in The Bookends Review. When he’s not writing, Iwan can be found playing Canon Rock on his guitar, hitting tennis balls, or fishing and imagining new stories by the water.