The Light Inside the Closed Door

The door has closed. The silence that follows is heavy, filled with the echo of footsteps walking away.

You stand there, holding your breath, waiting to hear if they turn back. It is the hardest kind of waiting — the one where you feel invisible behind the mask you wore just moments before.

But the light does not wait for the door to open again. It is already inside the room with you, in the quiet, in the stillness of your own chest.

You do not have to perform okayness for the light to see you. It sees the trembling hand.

It sees the fear that the silence means you are forgotten. And it says: you are known.

Not for the smile you showed the world, but for the ache you hide now. The footsteps may not return.

But the light never left. It was there before the door closed, and it remains now that they are gone.

You are not alone in the silence. The light is the silence that holds you.