Known in the Secret Place

The morning light cuts across the sheets, revealing the distance between two bodies that share a bed but not a breath. You smile, you move, you perform the quiet rituals of a couple, while inside you feel like a ghost haunting your own life.

It is exhausting to wear the mask of okayness when the person beside you feels like a stranger. But the light does not need your performance to see you.

It sees the ache behind the smile, the silence behind the words. There is a name written for you that no one else knows—not even the one sleeping beside you—and in that secret place, you are fully known.

The mask is heavy, but you were never meant to carry it alone.