The Light Runs Before You Wake

The mask goes on before you even leave the house. You smooth it over your face, checking in the mirror to make sure no one sees the cracks.

You walk into the day looking like you have it together, while inside you are begging for a reason to keep going. Hope feels like something you have to manufacture, a performance you give to everyone who asks how you are.

But the light does not need your mask to find you. It was already there when you opened your eyes.

There is a father who saw his son coming home from a long way off. He did not wait for the boy to clean up or fix his story.

He ran. Before the apology, before the speech — he ran.

The light runs toward you the moment you wake up, not because you earned it, but because it cannot stay away. You do not have to generate hope.

You only have to stop hiding the part of you that knows it is already here.