The Light Runs Before You Speak

The house is quiet now, but the noise in your head is loud. You are replaying scenes from a childhood that ended decades ago, wondering if you are exaggerating the pain.

Wondering if maybe it wasn't that bad. Maybe you were just too sensitive.

Maybe you should have been stronger. But listen — the light does not minimize what happened to you.

There was a father who saw his son coming home from a long way off, still covered in the filth of the pig pen. He did not wait for the apology.

He did not ask for the details. He ran.

Before the speech, before the shame could finish its work — he ran. That running is the truth about what was done to you.

It was bad enough that the light runs toward you right now, not to scold you for remembering, but to stand between you and the memory. Your pain is not a performance.

It is a fact. And the light treats it as such.

You do not have to prove the wound to be worthy of the healing.