Held When You Cannot Speak

The question comes—'What do you want?'—and your mouth moves before your soul catches up. You say 'anything is fine,' a ghost haunting your own body, smiling while the room spins.

But the light does not require you to perform an answer you do not have. There is a mercy waiting for you that is entirely yours, a grace that will protect you even when you cannot speak your true name.

You do not have to conjure a desire out of the hollow space inside you tonight. The light is already present in the silence you are trying to hide.

It is not waiting for you to be whole before it stays. It is keeping you right here, in the exhaustion, in the pretending, in the gathering dark.

You are held not because you chose correctly, but because you are known.