I didn’t look away in time.
That was my mistake. Or my initiation.

Now the light is gone,
and yet it screams behind my eyelids.

This isn’t memory.
Memory is polite.
This is a neurological bruise.
A stain burned straight into the nerve.

I close my eyes, and it’s still there.
Inverted. Pulsing. Mocking me with its persistence.
The world has moved on, but my perception hasn’t caught up.
It lags. It trembles. It refuses mercy.

They say, “It’s over.”
No.
What’s over doesn’t throb.

What’s over doesn’t rewrite the dark.

I touched something too bright to belong to comfort.
Too honest to be safe.
It didn’t enlighten me.

I’m not blinded.
I’m marked.

This is the afterimage,
the proof that something real passed through me
and didn’t ask my permission to stay.

I don’t seek healing.
I don’t seek meaning.

I live with the residue.

And every time the darkness settles in,
it lights up again,
quiet, merciless, undeniable.

What remains
when the light is gone
isn’t peace.

It’s vision.