The Light Waits Between Your Breaths

The house is quiet, but your heart is screaming. You lie perfectly still next to them, holding your breath so your uneven rhythm won't give you away.

You are terrified that if they hear you awake, they will know you are alone inside your own skin. That the distance between your bodies is actually an ocean.

But in this silence, where you feel most like a fraud, the light is not waiting for you to perform sleep. It is sitting right there in the gap between your breaths.

You do not have to fake peace to be held by it. The darkness has not overcome the life that is pulsing beneath your ribs, even when you try to hide it.

You are not alone in the dark; you are simply awake enough to feel the light waiting for you to stop pretending.