You Are the Source Not the Echo

The morning light catches the mask you wore last night and holds it up against your face. You hear your own laughter on the recording, but the voice sounds like a stranger's, and the gap between who you felt you were and who the world heard is terrifying.

It feels like an exposure, like the performance has slipped and revealed someone you do not recognize. But the light does not need the performance to find you.

It sees the one behind the sound, the one who was tired of pretending to be okay. There is a version of you that came from the light, a place where the light generates itself, and that origin is more real than any recording.

You are not the echo that bounces off the walls of a room. You are the source.

The mask was for the day, but the light is for always.