The Light Does Not Pack Its Bags

The engine is off, but the heat of the speech still burns in your chest. You sit in the driveway, watching the house, convinced that the silence behind those walls means they are packing your things.

That the words you stumbled over have become the reason you no longer belong. But the silence you fear is not an eviction notice.

It is simply a pause. The light that lives inside you does not pack its bags when you stutter.

It does not leave when the performance fails. It stays.

It is the one thing in you that cannot be boxed up or carried away. You are waiting for a rejection that has not happened.

The love that holds you is not fragile enough to break because of a bad morning.