The light is at the top of the day.
Straight overhead.
As high and as hard as it gets.
Coming down from directly above.
And nothing around you is throwing a shadow.
This is the hour the light is most itself.
Let the eyes close on it.
And let it stay bright behind them.
We don't begin in the dark.
We begin at noon.
Breathe in.
And let it out slow.
Again.
Now,
With the light straight down like that.
Find the one place it does not reach.
There are no longer shadows at noon.
None stretching out around you.
The one shadow left is underneath.
Under everything.
Follow it down.
Down under the lit surface of you.
To the balance.
The lowest base.
The underside the highlight never gets to.
It lights everything above.
And has never once reached in here.
This place has been in shadow the whole time.
And it never needed the light.
To be sure of itself.
It just holds.
Dense and quiet and certain.
Rest here a moment.
At the base.
And the one shadow noon can't burn off.
And from here.
Look up at your own highlight.
Something is going to move across it.
Not down here in the dark.
Up there where you can shine.
You cannot see it starting yet.
Now up,
Off the base,
Into the belly.
The base was dry land.
This is not.
Here,
There is water in you.
Dark and still,
And something in it has begun to move.
Deep in that water.
Another light.
A cooler wand.
The kind that comes up at night.
That does not burn and does not ask to be looked at.
It has been down here the whole time.
Under the surface.
And now it lifts.
It leaves the water and begins to climb.
Nobody lifts it.
It knows the way up.
Keep climbing with it.
Up above the belly.
Into the middle of you.
Under the breastbone.
And here is the fire.
This is where you shine.
It is the whole,
Bright,
Competent blaze of you.
The part that gets up and beats the day.
And gives off light doing it.
It has been burning a long time.
It is good at it.
Feel it at its full height now.
This is as strong as it gets.
Everything it does,
It is doing well.
It has warm people.
It has been the thing others came near to get warm at.
That is worth something.
And it was never a lie.
Let it be exactly as bright as it is.
And the cool light that came off the water is here now.
At the edge of it.
You feel it before you see it.
A coolness at the rim of all that blaze.
The highlight doesn't dim.
But something has come alongside it.
Quiet.
And begun to move across.
The day goes strange.
You have felt this and never had a name for it.
To light things without going out.
The warmth pulls back a step.
A stillness comes over everything.
The kind that comes when something large is nearly.
Here it hasn't arrived.
The blaze is still burning.
It does not know how to do anything else.
It goes on,
Giving off light with the cool thing sliding over it.
The way you go on being who you are right up until the moment you can't.
Let it be covered.
It won't stop.
It will be covered while it is still burning.
Now up into the chest.
The son of you.
The source the blaze rises off.
And the cool light finishes crossing.
The disc goes dark.
Not put out.
Where the brightest part of you was.
There's a dark circle now.
And the day has gone to dusk.
At its own high noon.
Everything in you that runs on being bright.
Has nothing to run on.
The warmth behind the cover.
You are the one who shines.
And you have been covered.
At the top of the day.
At the height of yourself.
Stay here.
In the dark that came at noon.
Do not reach for the light.
It is not yours to bring back.
One question.
Let it drop into the dark.
Ask it once and don't answer it.
What are you when the light in you goes dark?
Stay covered and look out.
The dark is bigger than you knew.
Your light filled the space you could see.
And you took that for the size of things.
It wasn't.
The dark goes out past the blaze.
And out past that.
Further than your light ever through.
Far out,
Innit?
Small lights.
A whole field of them,
Faint and many.
They were never yours.
You did not like them,
And you could not have.
They burn at a size you do not run.
Let the dark be as big as it.
It is.
And close it now.
Around the dark circle that was your son.
Look there.
There is a ring of light.
Thin and steady.
And it does not flicker.
It was always around your light.
Too close to the blaze to see.
Only now.
With the bright part covered.
Does it show?
This is the light that was never for anyone to see.
It gave off nothing anyone could warm their hands at.
It did not perform.
It asked no one to look.
It was just yours,
And lit.
The whole time you are busy shining.
Look at it.
It stayed lit when the rest of you went dark.
The cover does not stay.
It never does.
What crust keeps moving.
The way it came on its own.
And the light comes back.
It comes back from inside first.
Into the body it lifts.
The warmth returns to the chest.
The son of you.
Coming back on.
You'll come up again.
Your own light resuming.
Warming the center of you,
And spreading from there.
Slow,
All through the body.
And it does not come back the same.
You will carry what you saw after.
When you are shining again.
And cannot see it.
The bright part of you is uncovering now.
The highlight comes back the way it went.
On its own.
In its own time.
That had come all the way back.
And the light of the room comes back with it.
The real one.
In the actual room.
On the actual day.
Let it reach you where you sit.
You are shining again.
Up top.
The way you were.
And still lit underneath.
Where the shining never lets you look.
When the room's light has found you.
Let your eyes open onto it.
Hold the quiet a moment before anything else.
