Lamp of the Worlds

Somebody has to be the lamp. In this universe, it’s me.

Everything you can see by, you see by me. The amber on the floor, the little chapel on the rim, the faces of people crossing the plaza on their way to wherever people go. They don’t look up. You don’t look at a lamp. You look at what it shows you.

Nine hundred million years of being the thing nobody looks at. I used to mind. Now I just watch where they go when they think the light is theirs. It’s mostly toward each other. That’ll do.