You Were Never Dirty to Begin With

The water is scalding, but you do not turn it down. You are scrubbing until the skin is raw, trying to wash off the performance before anyone else can smell the exhaustion on you.

You stand in the steam, convinced that if you just scrub hard enough, you will be clean enough to be loved tomorrow. But the light does not need you to be spotless.

It does not require you to remove the day's dust before it draws near. There is a truth that lives in us and will be with us forever, deeper than any grime the world can stick to your skin.

You are not a project to be cleaned up before the light can enter. You are already held.

The water runs down the drain, taking the makeup and the mask with it, but the person underneath was never dirty. The gathering dark cannot stain what the light has already claimed.