a light on the hill

i began by seeing opportunity gleaming at me from atop a towering hill. it was so very distant that the pale glow was nothing more than a late night phantasm. a silky white noise that insinuated itself into my deepest childhood dreaming. but i was tortured by the idea of such heights, by the notion that one such as me could dare dream of things i surely had no chance of knowing.

years passed.

as i climbed the slightest bit closer, i saw that the gleam was not as far away as i had thought. but it was hard to tell. the light would wink on…and off. it would wander to the left, and then disappear. sometimes i ran at it, but mostly, i told myself i didn’t care whether or not i ever found it.

over time, i forgot whether i wanted to reach that light or not. i wandered laterally, tangentially, vaguely. over time, i knew pain, i knew struggle, i knew confusion, i knew frustration. and bitterness. and then one day i looked up and realized i was in snatching distance. i was only one more hop away from the yard from where that light was powered. the one that twinkled and shone over all those peaks and ruts and fences and chasms, and found its way to me so long ago, a platinum-eyed angel who waited until the late show’s static exploded into incoherence before pressing her lips up to the screen and whispering to me every night.and now

now that i am standing here and looking out over all i traveled and all i sought, i realize something. all the warmth of that light was only a reflection of my own desire, and my own energies, and my own dreaming. for now that I am at the edge of this glow, i find that the dreams in my mind might not have been my own to begin with. in fact, i am not sure that the angel of my youth was not but a demon, and its searing luminance something terrible, after all.

which leaves me with the question why was i called here?