Before the Light - a short story.

The hospital room was quiet, save for the soft hum of machines and the distant murmur of nurses. Clara lay in the bed, her breath shallow, her body frail under the thin blanket. The world around her seemed to blur—walls, ceiling, the IV drip—all fading into a soft haze. Time felt slippery, as if it no longer held her.

She closed her eyes, expecting darkness, but instead, a gentle warmth bloomed within her. It wasn’t a memory or a vision, but a feeling, vast and boundless, like sinking into an ocean that was somehow also her. The boundaries of her body dissolved. The pain, the weight of her illness, the fear of the end—they unraveled, threads pulled loose from a tapestry she no longer needed.

There was no Clara, no hospital, no world. There was only this—a luminous awareness, infinite yet singular, without edges or center. She wasn’t observing it; she was it. The thought of death, once so heavy, now seemed like a ripple on the surface of a still lake. There was no loss, no separation, because there had never been anything but this one consciousness, timeless and whole.

A smile flickered on her lips, unnoticed by the body that was no longer hers. The machines beeped on, but she was already everywhere, remembering what she had never truly forgotten: there is only one thing, and it is this—pure, unending awareness.