The Light That Does Not Flinch

The afternoon sun is unforgiving, lighting up the screen where your finger still hovers. You are staring at the sent icon, rehearsing the exact second their face shifts from love to disappointment.

You have already lived the rejection a hundred times in the quiet hum of the office. But listen — the light that lives inside you does not flinch when you speak.

It was there before the words formed, and it remains after they land. There is a bruised reed the light will not break, and a smoldering wick it will not snuff out.

Your honesty is not the thing that drives love away. It is the only thing that can make room for the real thing.

The expression you fear may never come. Or if it does, the light inside both of you is strong enough to hold the space between the words.