The Guest Who Never Left

The key turns in the lock and the sound hits your chest like a physical blow. You flinch before the door even opens, because your body already knows the silence waiting on the other side.

No one else is coming home. The house holds its breath with you.

But listen — the light does not require a crowd to be real. There is light within a person of light, and it lights up the whole world.

If it does not shine, it is dark. The darkness you feel is not the absence of people; it is the forgetting of the guest who never left.

You are not waiting for someone to fill this space. You are the space where the light lives.

The key opens the door, but it cannot lock out the presence that is already inside. Tonight, the flinch is real.

But so is the guest.