The Nature Of Being A Beacon

Often when I talk to people I feel

Lonely, especially when they get

Close to me.

It’s the nature of being a beacon, I suppose

So high, so intense, so proud, so tall

So dang vertical.

The people from a distance feel like

We’re on the same level, profoundly connected

Warm, delightful, incensed smoke secondhanded on the sunset

But the closer you get, the deeper you go

The more levels you start to unravel, the more you wonder

How you got into this dank dark hole of a man, someone

So cold, so neglected, so broken, you wonder to yourself

Is this infrastructurally sound?!

But I have a mission, I am built this way

For a reason, and I know that no matter how hard it is

To feel warmth of a single hand

At the bottom of a spine-chillingly cold steel structure

Hundreds of feet below the surface

I need to keep believing I have a purpose.