The Welcome Arrived Before The Change

The house is quiet now, and your mind is loud with the speech you will never deliver. You are rehearsing an apology for existing, for the space your body takes up, for the air you breathe tonight.

You craft the words carefully, aiming to make yourself smaller, to shrink your footprint until it disappears. But the light does not ask you to apologize for your presence.

There was a man named Zacchaeus who climbed a tree just to see, small and despised, hiding in the leaves. The light stopped, looked up, and called him by name before he could say a single word of regret.

It did not say: come down when you are worthy. It said: I must stay at your house today.

The invitation came first. The welcome arrived before the change.

You are practicing a speech for a judge who has already left the courtroom. The light is not waiting for your apology.

It is already sitting at your table, waiting for you to come down from the tree and eat.