The Light Beneath the Costume

The afternoon demands a performance, and you have become expert at moving just fast enough to keep the costume inflated. But there is a terror humming beneath the ribs—the fear that if you stop, the fabric will drop and reveal nothing underneath.

You are not empty. You are just tired of holding the mask up with your own hands.

There was a man born blind, and the people around him argued about whose fault it was, treating his darkness like a moral failure. But the light looked at him and said the condition was not a punishment, but a space where something true could be displayed.

Your exhaustion is not evidence of hollowness. It is the canvas.

When you finally stop moving, the world will not see nothing. They will see the light that was there before you ever put the costume on.