The Light That Stays

I stay on
when everything else turns off.
Not because I’m needed—
just… not noticed enough to be switched off.
By morning,
I vanish without proof I was ever here.
The Sun arrives.
And suddenly, light matters again.

There’s a brief moment—
somewhere between leaving and arriving—
where we both exist.
It never lasts long.

“So… you’re the one they wait for,” I said.
The Sun stretched into the sky,
unhurried.
“And you’re the one who stays,” it replied.

I flickered.
“Staying isn’t the same.”
“No one gathers around me.
No one speaks about me.
I don’t wake anyone.
I don’t grow anything.”
A pause.
“I just… last.”

The Sun didn’t interrupt.
It listened.

“What is it like?” it asked.
“The night.”

No one had asked me that before.

“It’s quiet,” I said.
“Too quiet, sometimes.”
“But… there are moments.”

“Someone sits alone—
and doesn’t feel alone.”
“Someone wakes up lost—
and doesn’t panic.”
“I don’t light everything.
Just… enough.”

The Sun softened.
“I’ve never seen that,” it said.
“When I come, everything begins at once.
Noise. Movement. Expectation.”
“No one meets me halfway.
No one needs me gently.”

I didn’t know what to say.
So I didn’t.

“I thought you had everything,” I said.
A pause.
“And I thought I was missing something.”

The sky started choosing sides.
I could feel myself thinning.

“Do they notice when you leave?” the Sun asked.
I almost said no.

“Sometimes,” I said.

That was enough.

By the time the world fully woke up,
I was gone.
Like always.

That night, I stayed on again.
Same place.
Same light.

Just…
not as small as I thought I was.