The Light Before the Screen Went Dark

It is late, and the house is quiet enough to hear the silence between your heartbeats. You are staring at a name reduced to a single initial, wondering if the absence of your stories has been felt on the other end of the wire.

The screen glows in the dark, a small, cold fire that offers no warmth, only the ache of what used to be seen. But the light that lived in those shared moments was never dependent on their eyes to exist.

It was already in you before the first like, and it remains now that the scrolling has stopped. You did not lose the light when you stopped posting; you simply stopped performing it for an audience that cannot hold it.

The Father's love is not a notification that disappears when the phone goes dark. It is the steady, silent presence sitting right beside you in this watch, knowing your full name even when you hide it behind a letter.