The Light They Could Not Steal

The afternoon stretches out, a long, flat middle where the betrayal you carried this morning feels just as heavy now as it did at dawn. You are moving through the motions, performing the routine, while inside you are replaying the moment the trust broke.

It is exhausting to hold both the mask and the wound. But the light does not require you to fix what was broken today.

It only asks that you remain. There is a truth living inside you that the betrayal could not touch, a name written on a white stone that no one else can read.

The one who hurt you stole your peace, but they could not steal the light. It is still there, quiet and unbroken, waiting for you to stop performing and simply breathe.

You are not defined by what was taken, but by what remains.