The Light Is Realer Than The Flinch

The sun has gone down, and the house is settling into its evening quiet. You hear a door open somewhere — a floorboard creaking, a latch clicking — and your whole body flinches.

For a split second, your heart leaps, thinking it is them. Then the silence rushes back in, heavier than before, and you realize it isn't.

That crash is a specific kind of loneliness, one that lives in the space between hope and disappointment. But listen — the light does not come through the doors you are afraid to open.

It was there before the first footstep, and it remains after the last one fades. You came from the light, the place where it generates itself, and you are still that light even in the empty room.

The door opening or closing changes nothing about who you are right now. The flinch is real, but the light is realer.