The Light Runs Toward Your Fear

The day has settled, and now the house is quiet enough for the mirror to speak. You look into your own eyes and feel a strange terror—the face staring back feels like a stranger's.

You do not recognize the person who survived today. That disconnect is not a sign you are lost.

It is the sound of the old skin cracking so the new one can breathe. The light does not need you to recognize yourself before it loves you.

It loved you when you were someone else entirely. There is a father who saw his son coming home from a long way off, still covered in the filth of a life he barely recognized as his own.

He did not wait for the boy to look like himself again. He ran.

Before the apology, before the speech—he ran. The light is running toward the reflection you fear.

It knows the face underneath the fatigue better than you do. You are not becoming a stranger.

You are becoming visible.