The Light Runs Before You Speak

The house is quiet now, and the window has become a mirror. You see the face that laughed an hour ago—the one that told the joke, nodded at the right time, carried the conversation—and it looks like a stranger wearing your skin.

The mask fits so well you forget you are wearing it until the silence returns. But in this hour, when the performance ends and the armor falls away, the light does not scold you for the act.

It sits with you in the exhaustion of being two people. There is a father who saw his son coming home from a long way off.

He did not wait for the speech. He ran.

Before the apology, before the explanation—he ran. The light is running toward the part of you that is tired of pretending.

It knows the face behind the glass better than you do. You do not have to hold the pose here.

The darkness has not overcome it. The person staring back is not a fraud; they are just weary.

And the light loves them enough to sit with them in the dark.