They told you the light was borrowed —
that the glow on your skin came from somewhere else,
some other source, some warmer thing
that would eventually turn away
and leave you in the dark it found you in.

You believed them.
For a long time, you believed them.

But the firefly doesn't borrow its light.
It makes it — from the inside,
from whatever alchemy the body knows
when it decides to be seen.

And you —
you have been glowing in the dark
for longer than you've known what to call it.
Through the fog. Through the trough.
Through the Sunday afternoons
that feel like tiny deaths
and the equinoxes that break open
every stone you thought was solid.

The light didn't leave you.
It went inside.
The way a seed goes into the earth
not to die
but to stop being a seed.

Look at your hand.
The firefly was never landing —
it was never a visitor.
It was already there,
permanent,
inked into the skin that carried
every breaking
and came through glowing anyway.

You are the source.

You always were.