I wanted to write about

The first

Time I saw a spotlight

And knew what it meant

It was in a theater

And

Smoke machines blew

The light into existence a light

I had never seen before the spotlights

They circled cut paths I couldn’t

Follow

Define

Shining through the smoke

Light made color made smoke made real

It wasn’t the light I saw it was the smoke spotlit but it was

Only the light I knew

Saw

Could see

Until I thought of driving

Home

Late one night in the front seat and falling asleep

As our headlights cut through the fog

And knowing if I could just

Crawl through the window and

Sit on the hood of the

Car and reach out my foot and stand

on the fog-beam I would

Be carried somewhere more comfortable than the

One crick-necked nook

I had found that would

Let me fall asleep dreaming of

Crawling through windows. I wanted

To write about that first time,

When I watched the spotlights draw symbols

A cuneiform language only the smoke could read and how the

Smoke danced and I realized

The only way to shine is to be

So

Small

That you cannot cast a shadow,

That everything casts a shadow that

To shine you must block something else from shining

Because we are not suns

We are not

We are small and

Lonely

moons.

But what if we were so small we didn’t have to be?

We could be dust and smoke and

The light could dance through us

Together

And we would dance through it

And bring it to life

Write in a language only

We can read as we swim through ourselves

Ourselves the light we’re swimming through

Light is only light until it hits the dust

The dust makes the beam

Be small with me and build beams of light in a small theater

Hall where the dust has

Collected where

We have collected

Ourselves.

That is what I wanted to write

About but as I watched the

Beams moving

And learned the smoke of a

Dusty theater-room

And how it dances

Even after the light leaves it,

It must, even though

I

Cannot see

It, because it is

Always ready always

Dancing when the light arrives

The dust is a beam of light

Waiting

To be built, a boat

Waiting

To breathe an ocean into

Existence and float

Through it and

Be rocked

By it and

Be

It, is

What I wanted to write about but

As I watched the beams

Moving one

Met my eye

And

The smoke vanished

And

The beam vanished

And

There was nothing

But the light

Staring at me

Ripping my shadow

Out of me and

Hurling it behind me only

For a second

An angry and

Vengeful second who are you to

Tell me that I need the dust?

You are not a sun

You are barely a moon you are

So small

So

small

And still you cast a shadow you

Take from me

Use me

Know yourself

Build your world

By me with me through me

And you sit

In this dusty theater hall

So small

And want to write

That it is dust that makes the beam?

No smoke machine could

Blow the light into

Existence what would you call

Smoke if there was no light to

Pass through it to

Light it breathe it into

Existence now

Sit

Lonely and selfish

moon

And watch the show.