Illusions

I come from the winter people.

They sent me to this sometimes green and hot place for learning.  I thought it was an honor.  I thought it would make me rich with experience.

Since then, at least ten, maybe twenty times a day I have begged for ignorance.   This is wealth with no place to spend it.

"We will wait for you," they told me.  "We will feel every moment of your progress."  I made them swear it.

Yet even with awareness of their presence my loneliness aches so deeply that I am convinced it is burying me.  I want to go home.  But home will not have me.  Not yet.  Not when it is clear even to me that, although fatigued and battle-scarred, I am still standing.  And not until I know all that is killing these sometimes green and hot-weathered people.