The World I Made of Light

A Minecraft Lament

I. I built a house on a hill made of nothing. No stone. No time. Just light arranged into shape, into shelter.

And still— when the sun set behind its pixel sky, I felt something close to joy. Or maybe more than joy. Maybe remembrance of something I never lived but still belonged to.

II. They say it’s not real. Just bits, and blocks, and code.

But I remember every stair I placed. Every sheep I led home by torchlight. Every door I shut not out of fear— but care.

If this is not real, then what is memory but another kind of imagined place?

III. I made a garden once where nothing could grow, but I planted anyway. I watched colors bloom against the quiet hum of the world and thought— there is peace here. Not in permanence. But in presence.

IV. And maybe that’s the truth of it. That we come here not to escape, but to remember what creation feels like without weight.

Where no one judges your towers. Where joy can be shaped from a mountain, a cave, a sky that never ends.

V. One day, I closed the gate and left. The torches still burned. The wheat still swayed. The music played faintly, as if the world knew I’d return, but not soon.

But I think of it sometimes— my house of light. My home of nothing.

And I know: it meant something. Even if no one else saw it. Even if it only ever lived inside a dream I made with both hands.