The Light in Your Trembling Hand

The screen glows in the dark, showing you fires you cannot put out and faces you cannot touch. You scroll until your thumb aches, trapped between the horror over there and the warmth of your own coffee cup right here.

The gap feels like a crime. The silence of your street feels like a betrayal of the noise in the images.

But listen — the light does not demand that you carry the whole world's pain in your chest tonight. It only asks that you do not look away from the one thing you can actually hold: the person you are, sitting here, awake.

The paralysis you feel is not hardening your heart. It is the friction of a soul that still cares.

The light is not in the fire on the screen. It is in the trembling hand that holds the phone.

You are not the disaster you are watching. You are the witness who has not yet gone numb.

And that is enough for this hour.