Luminous

My valour is quiet.

It does not arrive with spectacle

or the need to be witnessed.

It is the choice I make—

again and again—

to keep moving

when everything in me

craves stillness or surrender.

It is persistence,

not born of bravado,

but of necessity—

the kind that grows

when the world narrows

and yet I breathe deeper,

stand taller.

I have known adversity

not as an enemy,

but as a mirror—

one that asks me who I am

when ease has abandoned me.

And still, I rise.

Still, I answer.

Still, I walk forward

when no one is watching.

My faith lives in shadow.

Not blind, but deliberate.

I do not need light to believe in it.

I do not need proof to keep going.

My light has never been a performance.

It is a presence.

A knowing.

It is inherent.

For I shine.

Not because I am untouched by darkness,

but because I carry a flame through it.

I do not wait to be seen.

I do not seek permission to glow.

I am luminous—

because I remember

what I’ve endured

and who I’ve become.

And that remembering

is my quiet revolution.

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JPC