The Light Holds You While You Sink

The afternoon stretches out, a long, flat middle where the noise of the world drowns out the quiet cracking of your own spine. You finally let the mask slip, just an inch, hoping someone would see the drowning beneath the performance.

But the room kept moving. The coffee cups kept clinking.

And the silence that followed your stumble was more terrifying than the fall itself. It felt like proof that no one was really looking.

That you were alone in the water. But listen — the light does not need you to drown loudly to find you.

It saw the slip before you even let it happen. It was already in the water, holding you up while you thought you were sinking unnoticed.

The world's silence is not abandonment. It is simply the background noise against which the light speaks your name, soft and steady, right where you are.