The Light Knows Your True Face

The day has started, and you are already wearing the face that gets you through the door. You smile at the right moments.

You nod. You say the words that make sense to everyone else.

But then you catch your reflection in a dark window — maybe the coffee shop glass, maybe the black screen of your laptop — and the eyes staring back feel like they belong to a stranger. Someone you've never met.

Someone who is tired in a way you cannot explain. You keep walking because stopping would mean admitting the mask has weight.

But the light does not need your performance to see you. It sees the one behind the glass.

The one who is weary of pretending. There is light within a person of light, and it lights up the whole world.

Even when you feel like a stranger to yourself, that light has not left. It knows the face you wear.

It knows the face underneath. And it calls both of them by name.