Anthesis of Sadness

I stepped forward. One step, then another, but each slower than the last, as if the world itself were becoming denser around me, or perhaps it was simply my body — emptied, twisted, undone — struggling to respond anymore. It wasn’t hesitation. It wasn’t fear. There was no more room in me for that kind of resistance.

It was something older. Deeper. A kind of surrender woven under the skin, something creeping, animal, that had supplanted any will to fight or return. I had become this body too heavy for itself, this fatigue piled up like years of rain on ruins. I wasn’t moving toward a choice. I was simply going where the ground collapsed with me.

It was something else. A total exhaustion, absolute, almost sacred, as if every cell of my being had understood that this step, that path, called for no more.

My legs had grown heavy, not because of fear — that had long since dissolved — but from pure saturation, from excess tension, effort, resistance worn down to the bone.

My body was nothing but a badly sewn sack of pain, a grotesque assemblage of worn-out nerves and beaten flesh, a stretched envelope, too full of stifled screams, restrained spasms, digested refusals. It still moved, by reflex, by automation, propelled by a mind that could no longer bear to think, that clung to momentum like a puppet thrown toward its final scene.

Even thinking burned. It had become a weight, a slow poison. Every thought bore the imprint of a love I no longer wanted to feel, of a gaze I no longer wanted to remember, of a voice that might have said "stay" if I had still been able to hear it without screaming.

The edge was there. Motionless. Perfectly silent. Just one step away. A trivial step, yet immense. The abyss stretched out before me like a vast maw, open not to swallow me but simply to exist — a mute mouth in a world without cries, without calls, without promises. It demanded nothing. It didn’t seduce. It was just there, vast, black, patient, with a purity so stark it tore at the nerves.

I looked at it. For a long time. So long I lost count. Muscles frozen, breath suspended, the moment stretched until it became nothing but a dull throb in my temples. And behind me, without a sound, without a word, the world watched me in return. Not with eyes. Not with a voice. But with something else. A presence. A warmth. A strange patience, heavy, almost benevolent. As if it wasn’t holding me back. As if it accepted, in silence, what I was about to do.

This world, behind me... it wasn’t calling me. It wasn’t pleading. It wasn’t insisting. It waited. Simply. Like a calm presence, without blame, without pressure. A gentle warmth, almost hazy, whispered something to me — not with a voice, not with words, but with a way of being there, constant, whole, and almost tender.

You can still come back.

That’s what it said. You can come back. You can turn around. You can try, even if you no longer know how. Even if everything in you is still bleeding.