No one can see in the dark.

There are flashlights and fire, but sometimes the shadows blind my bare eyes.

Light can do the same thing if there’s too much of it.

Now I walk down my block, and the problem isn’t really that I can’t see.

When I look up, I see sky, ever blue.

There isn’t a single cloud in it today.

Every star gazer hopes for a clear sky,

But out of the countless stars that are out there, I can only see one right now.

I can see the sidewalk in front of me.

In the distance, there are heatwaves coming off it, which make it look blurred.

I guess the problem is I can only see so far in each direction.

When I think about it, I realize that that’s why I’m walking,

Because with each step I take, I can see a little more.

I took a trip to a desert once.

It took all day to get there, but there were heat waves coming off the sand,

Just like the heat waves that I see now.

I remember taking a walk there too, and leaving a trail of footprints behind me,

That from up high must have looked like a dotted line.

I know from experience that if I walk far enough, the sky seems different somehow,

Everywhere I go it’s a slightly different shade of blue,

And everywhere I go, even in the middle of the day there are hundreds of stars far above me.

Hundreds of glowing dots that beckon to me,

Even as I stand on the ground, in the little circle of world that I can see right now.

They beckon to me, not because I know they’re there,

But because they know that my world is always getting bigger.

The problem isn’t that I can’t see, but that I have no map.

I walk a lot though, and those steps are my dotted line.

Those steps are my flashlight.