You Are Not the Damage, You Are the Blaze

The water has stopped running, and the mirror is fogged thick with steam, hiding everything but the red marks on your skin. You stare at them, terrified that this pain is the only proof you existed today—that the day left no other trace but the wounds you gave yourself.

But the light does not read your body like a ledger of failure. It reads you like a story it is still writing.

There is light within you, a person of light, and it lights up the whole world even when you cannot see it. The marks are real, but they are not your origin.

You came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord, and that origin cannot be erased by what your hands did in the dark. The steam will clear.

The face beneath it is not defined by the red lines, but by the fire that was cast upon the world and is being guarded until it blazes. You are not the damage.

You are the blaze.