The Light Inside Your Hollow Smile

The muscles in your cheeks are aching from holding up a smile that hasn't reached your eyes in three hours. You are terrified that everyone in the room can see the hollow space behind the performance, that they know you are empty.

But the light does not need your mask to find you. It sees the exhaustion beneath the grin.

It knows the weight of the act you are carrying. There is a truth living inside you that was there before the smile began, and it will be there after the face drops.

You do not have to manufacture glory to be held. The light is already shining from within the very hollowness you are trying to hide.

You are not a fraud; you are a vessel waiting to be filled again.