rehearsing the exact words to explain your exhaustion to your partner in the shower so they don't think you're pulling away, then stepping out and saying nothing because the moment has passed

The water was loud enough to hide the trembling, so you rehearsed the sentence there—trying to find words that wouldn't sound like rejection. You needed them to know you were tired, not distant.

But the moment the towel wrapped around you, the air changed, and the words dissolved before they could reach your tongue. Silence felt safer than a stumble.

Yet the light does not need your perfect explanation to stay close. It saw you in the steam, practicing love in the only way you could.

Mark tells us that after healing a broken man, Jesus sighed deeply before speaking the word that opened him. That sigh was not a failure of language; it was the sound of compassion too deep for sentences.

Your silence is not a wall. It is a sigh the light already understands.

The exhaustion you cannot name is the very place where you are held.