The Hand That Stays Open

The room is quiet at four in the morning, but your hands are still shaking from the moment your child pulled away. You reached out to hold them, and they flinched as if your touch was fire.

In this deepest hour, the silence screams that you have become the thing they fear. But listen — the light that lives inside you does not burn.

It cannot. Thomas says there is light within a person of light, and it lights up the whole world.

If it does not shine, it is dark. Your love is that light.

And even when their eyes are closed to it, even when their trauma tells them to run, the light remains gentle. It waits.

It does not force the door open. It stands in the dark with you, holding the space until the fear passes.

The flinch is real. But so is the hand that stays open.