by Harper Smith
3.23.26
Imagine you are alone.
Imagine you are a person in a tiny box,
and the box is too small for you
–you are a person, after all–
but to leave that box means to leave your home,
and if there is no one to help you,
then you are on your own,
and you are building another one, all by yourself,
and you’re, like, fourteen, you don’t even know how to use screws!
let alone rewrite your life, rebuild your home, entirely from scratch, alone—
Are you picturing it?
Okay, good.
Now picture:
They love you
and they lift you out
gently, and kindly
and they tell you it’s okay
that the box was the thing that was built wrong,
not you
and that they will help you build a new one,
a bigger one, a better one,
maybe even a whole treehouse if you want,
because they know how claustrophobic you get
when you are alone.
and they guide your hands to the hammer and say
‘here, like this–’
and before they can finish someone rips them away
and the nail goes clean through your hand.
Imagine you are going to leap upwards,
just to see if you can fly,
and there is someone waiting,
someone who will catch you,
someone who has always caught you,
except now they can’t catch you anymore
because he said so.
because he said
‘falling is safe,’
and he said
‘a hammer to the hand is better than ever leaving that box,’
and there is nothing either of you can do
but listen, and nod.
And so now you have two choices:
to keep flying, and know that if you ever should fall
if you ever get swept up in the wind or feel your teeth kiss the pavement,
that no one is coming to help you,
because helping you means punishment, helping you is a crime,
helping you means that they are falling too.
so you can do that,
or you can stay on the ground,
and you can fold yourself back into that tiny little box,
the one that they promised you you’d be rid of,
and you can whisper ‘i didn’t even like heights,
i just liked freedom’
and you can revel in the feeling
of the walls pressing in
while you are completely
and utterly
alone.
The Lighthouse 