Sunlight

The sunlight hits me in a way I don’t deserve
soft, forgiving,
like it doesn’t know
what I did last night.

I blink into the brightness,
eyes stinging with a truth
I’ve been running from for years:
it’s not the darkness that breaks me,
it’s the moments when light returns
and I realize how long I’ve been gone.

Alcohol has a way of teaching you to hide 
behind noise, behind smoke,
behind your own heartbeat
when it gets too loud.
But morning light is honest.
It sees everything.
Even the things I pretend I’ve forgotten.

And as it warms my skin,
I feel the lie inside me collapse a little 
the lie that I needed the bottle
to survive the night,
that I needed the burn
to feel anything at all.

But sunlight asks nothing of me.
It doesn’t demand,
it doesn’t punish,
it just waits.
Patient.
Like it believes I can begin again.

Maybe that’s why it scares me 
because somewhere beneath the ruins,
a part of me still wants
to walk toward the light
instead of reaching
for another shadow to drink.