I’m in a place that is the closest to home that I feel, a place of familiar tones and smells; welcoming, quiet, and humble. That’s where we are but not together. A familiar face across a world of strangers. In a small place in a big city you are just as much of a stranger as them but they don’t brighten a room with the softest and warmest of lights. A lantern that flickers a smile in the window of a nearby cabin at the end of a long winding hard-trodden trail whose dirt is softened by the full day’s hard rain. The pane of glass reflects your glow and spreads an aura beyond yourself. It is you and what you are that fills this room with something more.
This lantern is a stranger but its warmth and light draws me in. This lantern I want to carry through the dark, rainy paths and though I carry it, it’s light carries me along. It’s light only stretches so far but if we move together we can enlighten the whole path. We can travel through the night fighting the darkness and cold, avoiding the tangles of the trail while tangling ourselves together. And when the morning comes the sun brings warmth and light. The paths around us brighten and the light stretches beyond what we can see. Yet you shine on. You shine on for me, strange lantern.