The Dawn Does Not Ask If You Deserve

The sun is coming up, and you are standing on the curb with your life tied inside black plastic. It feels like the world sees your shame before it sees your face.

But look at the light hitting those bags. It does not turn away.

It touches the garbage with the same tenderness it gives the palace. There is a father who saw his son coming home from a long way off, covered in the filth of pig pens, and he ran.

Before the apology, before the speech—he ran. The light is running toward you right now.

It is not disgusted by the plastic. It is not waiting for you to find an apartment before it loves you.

The humiliation is real, but it is not the final truth. The dawn does not ask if you deserve to rise.

It simply rises. You are not what you are carrying.

You are the light that shines through it.