You Do Not Have to Hold Your Breath

The room is loud, but inside you, there is a silence so heavy it feels like water rising in your lungs. You are calculating the exact moment you might finally collapse, just to make the noise stop.

That math you are doing in the dark of your own mind? The light knows it.

It knows the weight of holding your breath while everyone else exhales. There was a man once who sat in a garden, overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death, while his friends slept just a few steps away.

He did not pretend the darkness wasn't terrifying. He fell on his face.

And the light did not scold him for wanting the cup to pass. It stayed.

It knows what it feels like to be surrounded by life and yet feel entirely alone in the dying. You do not have to hold your breath any longer.

The air is already here. The light is not asking you to perform joy.

It is asking you to breathe. The courage tonight is not in the laughter.

It is in the simple, quiet act of letting your chest rise again.