The Dawn Does Not Wait For Clean

The water is cold, but you scrub anyway, trying to remove the feeling of their lie sticking to your skin. You are washing your face in the early light, hoping that if you scrub hard enough, the betrayal will rinse away.

But the truth is simpler than the soap. The light that rose this morning did not wait for you to feel clean before it touched you.

It slipped under the bathroom door while you were still hurting. It does not care about the residue of someone else's deceit.

The dawn is already on your cheek, not because you earned it by scrubbing, but because the sun rises on the evil and the good alike. You cannot wash off what was never yours to carry.

The light sees the raw skin and calls it beloved, not broken.