The Light Runs Before You Stand

The mask has grown heavy tonight, fused to the skin by hours of holding a shape that isn't yours. You are afraid that if you finally let it drop, nothing will move underneath — that your real face has atrophied from the long silence of disuse.

But the light does not need your muscles to work again before it can shine. There is a father who saw his son coming home from a long way off, still wearing the rags of a stranger, and he ran.

Before the apology, before the speech, before the son even knew how to stand upright again — he ran. The light is already running toward the stillness you feel.

It does not wait for you to practice being real. It knows the face beneath the mask better than you do.

You are not required to rebuild yourself in the dark. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world to find you exactly as you are, frozen and afraid.

Your face has not forgotten how to feel; it has only been waiting for a love safe enough to wake it up.