The Light Loves the Mask

The mask is already on before your feet hit the floor. It feels heavy today, doesn't it?

That physical weight of the unspoken words still lodged in your throat, tasting like bile. You walk into the morning carrying a silence that burns.

You smile at the coffee machine. You nod at the screen.

You perform okayness while breaking inside. But the light sees behind the mask.

It sees the throat that is tight with what you could not say. It knows the taste of that bitterness.

You do not have to swallow it alone. The truth lives in us and will be with us forever.

Even the parts you cannot speak. Especially those parts.

The light does not ask you to remove the mask before it loves you. It loves the person wearing it.

It loves the person hiding behind it. It waits for the moment when the bile turns to breath.

When the silence becomes safe enough to break. You are not your performance.

You are the quiet thing underneath it. The light is already there, waiting in the pause between your words.