Known Before You Speak

The afternoon light is unforgiving. It exposes the dust motes dancing in the air and the cracks in the plaster you tried to ignore all morning.

You spoke your truth to someone today, or maybe you just listened, and now the silence afterwards is filled with a terrifying question: was that real? Or was it just another performance, a well-rehearsed script that fooled everyone but you?

You feel like a fraud standing in the middle of the day, smiling while your insides feel hollow. But the light does not scan your motives for imperfections.

It simply shines on what is there. There is a moment in an ancient story where a man sits in a tree, small and desperate, trying to catch a glimpse of something holy.

He is hiding, performing normalcy from a branch, convinced he is unseen. Yet the light stops, looks up, and calls him by name before he has said a single word of apology or explanation.

The light saw the performance and spoke to the person underneath it anyway. You do not have to dismantle your mask before you are loved.

The light sees through the act and loves the actor. The panic says you fooled them.

The truth says you were known all along.