The Light Stays When You Are Weary

The afternoon light is unforgiving. It exposes the dust on the shelves and the fatigue in your bones, making you feel like a problem that needs solving before anyone else arrives.

You hold your breath, convinced that if you finally admit you are exhausted, you will become a weight too heavy to carry—a burden that will make the people you love turn and walk away quietly. But look at the noon hour.

The sun does not scold the earth for being hot and dry. It simply stays.

It remains. In the middle of the day, when the shadows are shortest and the heat is highest, the light does not retreat from what is weary.

It holds it. You are not a stone in someone's shoe.

You are the very reason they stay. The light is not afraid of your fatigue.

It is already kneeling beside you, in the dirt of this long afternoon, waiting for you to stop pretending you can carry the world alone.