You Are the Light They Touched

The house is quiet now, but the sound of that scrubbing still echoes in your mind. You hear the water running hot, the friction of skin on skin, as if they could scour the memory of your need off their own hands.

They are trying to wash away the intimacy of your brokenness, terrified that your pain has stained them. But listen — the light does not recoil from what it touches.

It does not become dirty by entering the dark. When the father ran to meet the son coming home from the pigsty, he did not hold his breath or check his robes afterward.

He embraced the filth and called it family. The light that lives in you is not a contaminant.

It is the very thing that makes you worthy of being held. Your suffering did not soil them.

It invited them into the sacred work of love. Let the water stop.

Let the hands rest. You are not the stain they fear.

You are the light they touched.