Tell me, my brothers,

Why must I lie shackled to the boulders of hell

Wrists purpled from the weight of unbreakable chains

That slither, serpent-like, around my bare waist

And clamp around my knobby ankles

So I can no longer move?

 

It is just light

It is just knowledge

Is it not our duty to provide for the human race?

You begged me to do something noble for a change

You demanded I cut the antics

But mischief teems in my skin

So I became one of them

To escape you.

 

Is it really so horrible

The gift of light

The novel act of donating something you have in abundance?

Your knowledge

Stretches across the seas and spills outward into the turbulent universe

Yet when I grant them a sliver of awareness

A miniscule piece of the wisdom our race holds

You pounce on me, a wandering trickster

Your venom and blood overwhelm me

And what did I do?

 

I ran down their streets and breathed sight into allies

I learned their ways and their deepest fears

I smiled, cried, laughed, loved

I lived

And I felt myself growing closer to them, felt my holiness melt into humanity

So I thrust them out of darkness

I captured energy in coils of metal

I transmitted it through wires, harnessed its currents

Strung my gift down the lengths of illuminated cities

I let them believe I was of their race

Just for a little while.

 

Who knew there was a realm beyond pain

A furious, burning wave boiling my insides

I no longer feel anything but scalding agony.

 

And I scream.

 

 

You shame me for giving them light, shame me for falling to their level

Yet I was the one that rose

I was the one that interacted with them, understood them

In spite of you, whom they barely remembered

I became more than my celestial existence

I became

Human.