In the undergrowth Light is not beauty It is instruction It is timing A brief ignition Between silence and death Nothing ornamental Nothing excessive The signal ends Before it attracts meaning Before it becomes A target It was never meant to last Only long enough To be understood We learned to glow in the dark Not to survive But to be seen We learned to glow in the dark And called it freedom Visibility became oxygen Silence felt like failure We mistook exposure For proof of life Every moment illuminated Every impulse recorded Nothing allowed to decay Nothing forgiven We glow continuously Even when nothing is being said In nature The light turns off When the pattern is learned We removed the off-switch And called it progress We learned to glow in the dark Now the dark is watching We learned to glow in the dark And forgot how to hide What protected the insect Exposed the human What was camouflage Became confession The beetle disappears After the signal We remain Broadcasting Lit from the inside With nowhere left To go The forest does not reward brightness It rewards restraint The system does not see light It only counts it We glow Because stopping feels like erasure We learned to glow in the dark Until darkness lost its meaning We learned to glow in the dark Until light became a threat Glow Until nothing is left But visibility
