You Do Not Have to Burn

The water is scalding your skin because the numbness of holding it together for everyone else has become too heavy to carry alone. You stand there letting the heat crash against you, hoping the pain will prove you are still alive beneath the performance.

But the light does not need you to burn to know you are there. It saw you before the mask went on this morning.

It knows the weight you carry when no one is watching. There is light within a person of light, and it lights up the whole world—even when that person is standing in the shower, trembling, trying to feel something real.

You do not have to scorch yourself to be seen. The light is already in the water, in the steam, in the quiet of the bathroom.

It is not waiting for you to break before it arrives. It is here, in the middle of the day, holding you without demanding you speak.