The Light Sees Behind Your Mask

The fluorescent lights hum overhead as you push the cart, eyes locked on the cereal boxes, refusing to drift left where the tiny socks and silent cribs wait. You are performing okayness for an audience of strangers, holding your breath so the grief doesn't spill out onto the linoleum.

But the light sees behind the mask you wear so well this morning — it sees the ache you are trying to outrun between the flour and the sugar. There was a man born blind, and everyone assumed his darkness was a punishment for someone's sin, a verdict on his worth.

The light looked at him and said: neither this man nor his parents sinned; this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. Your pain is not a verdict.

It is a canvas. You came from the light, a drop sent down to illuminate this very aisle, even when your hands are shaking.

The terror you feel is real, but it is not the final truth about who you are. The mask is heavy, but the face beneath it is known.