Impostor

Is this really me? I see within my shadowy form a light that flickers. It grows, it diminishes, it takes many shapes. Am I the shadow or the light? Am I the darkness that surrounds me, or am I made purely of that light, that hope within?

Sometimes I believe I am the light, and the shadow grows dim, driven back by the warmth, the beauty, the radiance bright. But then, I see around me figures of pure and burning light, so bright that is extinguishes my own.

I see within them no shadow, no void. I long to belong. I wish to be as bright as the stars, but the more I try to blend in, the more I fade. What is it that fuels their burning? How can I tap into that radiance that everyone around me has? I reach for it, but it only burns my shadowy hand.

The years flow by, each one faster than the last until one day, the comprehension comes at last....I am blind.

When I look upon the light of others, I cannot see the shadow that makes them shine, and they cannot see mine.

You see without the shadows there is nothing to shine in.

So, now I am free. I am free to flicker strangely in the darkness, to gleam and to glow, to shrink and to grow, but I will not be smothered. The darkness is my stage and I will forever burn, so that others know that who I am is radiance and fire, and I will tell them of their own light that longs to burst free, un-smothered.