do you think her light is borrowed—something siphoned from the sun before dusk swallows the walls? (look closer. stay longer. watch carefully.) She is no candle trembling at the mercy of wind; She is brightness after it has already burned, hoarding every shard of daylight in the hollows of Her bones, in the quiet marrow of Her name.

not all light endures. some flare only when touched—quick, obedient, dead the moment the source withdraws. fluorescence. (is that what you call light?)

watch how She gathers heat without flame, brilliance without blaze, pressing it beneath Her skin until night arrives, hungry and unkind.

then—only then does She begin to glow.

not loud (never loud), but enough to map the shape of your fears, enough to make shadows hesitate before they touch you. do you not see it—the way darkness leans into Her and leaves altered? (even the void gentles in her presence.) 

She takes what would have undone you: the sharp edge of silence, the sour rot of worry, the small daily violences you do not name—and She keeps them. keeps them. keeps them.

until they turn into something else entirely.

light, yes, but slower now. heavier—almost aching in the way it refuses to leave. there is no spectacle in it, no sound, only the quiet insistence of something that outlasts its own end.

you call Her the light of the house, but houses sleep; She does not. even stripped of daylight, She remains—bleeding through walls, through closed doors, through the thin fabric of your unspoken grief.

(tell me: when you walk in the dark, whose light are you really following?)

it is Hers—the one that does not blind, does not boast, does not leave when the morning comes but stays, dim and faithful, teaching the night to unclench its grip on us.

Mother, how much light have You exhausted just to keep us breathing?

Art slider by Alexandra Asuncion