Light Refuses to Leave the Room

The afternoon stretches out, a long gray hallway where the only sound is the water running behind the closed door. You lie there, hollowed out, listening to them scrub the evidence of your shame from the sheets while you are too heavy to move.

The noise is a verdict. A reminder that you are the mess that needs cleaning up.

But the light does not wait for the bed to be made before it enters the room. It is already here, in the dust motes dancing in the stale air, in the rhythm of your own breathing.

The scrubbing will stop. The water will turn off.

And you will still be here, not because you earned the right to stay, but because the light refuses to leave a room just because it smells of failure. You are not the stain on the linen.

You are the one being held in the silence between the scrubbing and the stillness.