The Light Meets You in the Aisle

The song starts in the grocery aisle, and your body flinches before your mind can catch up. A physical recoil, a sudden tightening in the chest, as if the music from that year has reached through the speakers to touch the wound directly.

You are standing among the cereal boxes and the morning rush, but for a second, you are back in the middle of the breaking. The light does not ask you to straighten up and pretend the song didn't hit you.

It meets you in the freeze, in the shallow breath, in the way your hands grip the cart handle to stay upright. There is a rising sun coming from heaven, shining specifically on those living in the shadow of death, guiding feet that feel stuck in place.

The dawn is not denying the night you survived; it is simply arriving to stand beside you in the fluorescent hum. You do not have to explain the flinch to the light.

It already knows the weight of the memory. It is here to walk you out of the aisle, one slow step at a time, into the new day.