The Light Sitting With You on the Floor

The door clicks shut behind them, and the performance ends. For hours, you stood like a pillar—rigid, holding the roof up so the sky wouldn't fall on the people you love.

You smiled. You nodded.

You made sure everyone else felt safe. But now, in the sudden quiet of the hallway, your legs give out.

You slide down the wall to the floor because the strength you borrowed to hold it together has vanished the moment you stopped pretending. This is the middle of the day—the long, exhausting stretch where the mask feels heaviest and the gap between how you look and how you feel threatens to swallow you whole.

You are not failing because you collapsed; you are human because you did. The light does not ask you to stand back up right now.

It sits with you on the floor, in the dust of your exhaustion, and whispers that the rigidity was never the point. The point was the love that held you up until you couldn't anymore.

And that love is still here, even when your knees won't hold your weight.