He arrived believing light meant welcome home,
Each open hand a mirror of his own.
His trust lay open like an unlocked door;
he hadn’t learned what locks were even for.

But doors he’d trusted opened into walls,
And laughter learned to echo down the halls.
The light he’d followed home was baring teeth;
He learned the city’s grammar underneath.

No demons here—just men who kept a tab,
Whose open hands concealed the coming grab.
They fed on him with contracts, not with claws;
The city’s teeth were hidden in its laws.

He knelt where only rats and rain could see,
And let the dark ask what he’d ceased to be.
It took his coat, his coins, his final breath—
But something in his blood refused his death.

He gathered what the city hadn’t taken:
A name, a pulse, a faith not yet forsaken.
The night demanded he lie down and stay—
He answered it by walking into day.

He walked not past the dark but through its length,
And forged a kind of language from his strength.
The boy who came mistaking light for home
Now bore true light like marrow, blood, and bone.