The Light That Sees Behind Your Mask

The morning asks for a face you can wear, a smile that fits the light of the office or the street. You put it on, and it holds, even while your mind drifts back to a voice you haven't heard in years.

You are trying to remember the exact sound of it, the way they shaped your name the last time they spoke, but you realize with a quiet shock that you were too numb to hear it then. The moment passed while you were somewhere else, inside the armor you built to survive.

But listen — the light sees behind the mask you are wearing right now. It knows the grief of missing a sound before it was even gone.

In the Gospel of Thomas, it says that what you look forward to has already come, but you do not recognize it. Perhaps the love in that voice was not lost in your numbness.

Perhaps it was planted in you, waiting for this very moment of remembering to wake up. You are not defined by the times you missed the light.

You are defined by the fact that you are looking for it now.