Never wanted to come here. Never knew I’d end up here. But always knew I didn’t want to be here, even before I got myself here. And now there’s no way out.

I’m about as stuck as a light pole grafted into a tree, its thick flesh of bark wrapping around the cold, iron rod on the side of the street, at the corner of the street, where all traffic transposes from place to place, each moment a flurry of time and space.

The trouble is I know–yes, I feel–that I am made for more than this, more than just being a rod stuck in the ground with a big tree trunk wrapped around it. I am no more the tree than I am anything else on this street corner, and yet I am posted here, stuck in the ground, sticking up with a broken streetlamp hanging from the tip top of the pole that I am.

I feel the pressure of the tree trunk, and all nature with it, constricting me, constraining me, holding me back from realizing all that I was made to be. I was made, indeed, to be far more than just a bent-over pole with a busted lamp. I hang limply over the street corner, having been busted by some young punks who passed by one evening, casting stones at my fragile glass.

Like an oversized Goliath, David has defeated me, put me in my place, with a stone set between my glass eyes, which glass over more these days than ever before. In my heart of hearts, I feel the weight of that stone–a myriad of stones, really–casting me down, even as my gaze is fixed tight upon the ground. I feel in my chest the same burden that lies stuck between my eyes, my glass eyes, which once looked out with the light glowing from within, now dimmed with age and despair.

All glory I had is gone. I am but a leftover relic from times previous when I was something to behold: a lamppost lighting up the street corner so all could see what I saw, even in the darkness. Now, all I see is the darkness, overcome by the shadows that surround me and invade my whole being, so that great is the darkness within, where my light has been snuffed out.