The Weight of Light
I have watched the world turn bright,
a sunrise spilling gold over strangers’ roofs,
and felt the quiet swell of their laughter—
a river that runs past me, never asking
to be dammed.
Why must I be the keeper of that light,
the one who lifts another’s cloud‑filled sky,
while my own horizon stays cloaked in dusk?
What law—written in habit, whispered in prayer—
declares that joy is a gift to be given,
not a right to be claimed?
It is not that I love their smiles alone,
but that each smile is a thread in a larger tapestry,
and the loom of life shudders when a thread snaps.
When a neighbor’s smile cracks, the whole cloth trembles—
the air grows thinner, the night feels longer.
So I tend the garden of other hearts,
pruning weeds of sorrow, watering hopes with my own sighs,
because the soil beneath my feet is the same,
and the rain that falls on them also kisses my roots.
Yet in that giving, I hear a softer voice—
a reminder that the lantern I hold is not a torch to burn,
but a lamp to be lit from within.
If I keep the flame forever at the edge of others,
it will dim, a waning star unwilling to rise.
Joy, then, is not a one‑way road,
but a circular road that bends back on the traveler.
So the importance of their happiness
is a compass pointing toward a deeper truth:
to love others is to honor the echo of our own heart,
to let the world’s laughter become a chorus that carries us,
to realize that when the crowd sings, our own voice can finally join.
In the hush after the applause, I ask myself—
why must I be the keeper of others’ brightness?
Because the brightest sunrise is the one we share,
and in sharing we allow the light to touch the corners of ourselves
that have waited, patiently, for a dawn of their own.
Let the world be happy, and let me be too—
not as a selfish plea, but as a quiet promise
that the joy we sow elsewhere is the very seed
that will bloom in the garden of our own soul.