The Light Sits With Your Changed Face

The afternoon sun hits the screen just right, and suddenly you are staring at a stranger. Someone who looks like you, someone who wore your face, but whose smile feels like a language you no longer speak.

The gap between that person and this one feels like a canyon you cannot cross. You scroll past the evidence of a joy you cannot remember feeling, and the hollow ache settles in your chest.

The light does not ask you to pretend that person is still here. It does not demand you force a smile that doesn't fit.

In the middle of this long, flat day, the light is sitting with the version of you that is tired and changed. It knows the weight of the years that separate the two faces.

You do not have to go back to who you were to be held. The light is not in the photograph.

It is in the quiet room where you are breathing right now. It is in the wood of the table and the dust in the air.

You are not lost because you changed. You are just walking through the middle of a story that is not finished yet.