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The Light at the end


They say there’s a light at the end of the tunnel,
but nobody tells you how long the tunnel is.
Nobody warns you that sometimes it feels like you’re walking blindfolded
through stone,
hands out,
scraping your palms raw on walls that do not answer back.

The dark whispers things.
It tells you: this is forever.
It tells you: you are buried, not traveling.
And you almost believe it
because the dark is convincing.
The dark is patient.
The dark knows your name.

But then,
a thread.
So small you almost think it’s a trick.
A pinprick glow,
so far away it could be a star,
or a memory,
or a lie you once heard.

And yet,
your body leans toward it.
Every cell aching for the warmth.
Every scar humming: move.

Step by step,
you start again.
Not because the dark is gone,
but because the light is real.
And the closer you get,
the more it grows
from pinprick to lantern,
from lantern to sunrise,
from sunrise to flood.

Until it is not a light at the end of the tunnel.
It is the tunnel collapsing,
walls crumbling,
roof shattering into sky.
It is your lungs learning again
how to be full.
It is your heartbeat
not just surviving
but drumming.
A rhythm.
A declaration.

The light at the end of the tunnel was never waiting for you.
It was carried in your chest
the whole time.
Every stumble,
every crawl,
every almost-giving-up,
it was there,
a match unstruck,
a dawn unborn.

And now
you are the light.
You are the fire that the dark could not keep.
You are proof that tunnels end.

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