The Light Sees What Hides Behind Your Mask
The afternoon stretches out, a long, flat road where you are expected to perform being okay. Then the phone lights up on the table between you.
A name. Your stomach drops.
You know you will have to pretend you do not know who it is, to smile while the silence screams. The light does not ask you to be convincing.
It only asks you to be present in the ache. There is a father who saw his son coming home from a long way off — he did not wait for the apology or the rehearsed speech.
He ran. Before the mask could be put back on, before the performance could begin — he ran.
The light sees the exhaustion behind your eyes and loves what is hiding there. You do not have to hold the pretense up for another hour.
The truth is already standing in the room with you.
Drawing from
Luke, Gospel of Thomas
Verses
Luke 15:20, Thomas 3
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