You Do Not Need to Perform to Breathe

The room is loud, and you are holding your breath so no one hears the inhale. You have become an expert at smiling while your lungs burn, at nodding while you suffocate behind the mask.

But the light does not need your performance to find you. It sees the chest that refuses to rise.

It knows the air you are afraid to take. There was a man born blind, and people asked whose fault it was that he lived in the dark.

The light said: neither. It simply touched the dirt, made mud, and opened eyes that had never seen.

It did not ask him to prove he deserved sight first. It just gave it.

You do not have to hold your breath until you are perfect enough to exhale. The air is already here.

The mask is not required for the light to enter. Breathe.