Chapter 155: Thoughts as Walls
I was trembling. Not from a shiver of fear. Not from a frozen jolt coming from an outside too vast, too unknown, too silent. Not even from that dizziness one feels when a scream too ancient awakens in the chest. No, it wasn’t any of that. It wasn’t the cold, it wasn’t the stupefaction, it wasn’t the mystical dread of a world that had become too big for me.
It was rage.
Not a sharp anger, not a burning fury, not that theatrical storm we brandish at others while shouting their names. No. A muffled rage. Heavy. Ancient. A hatred without a target. Or rather, yes — but aimed. Directed. Not against the voices. Not against the distorted memories. Not against this world with soft entrails still holding me. Against me. Me alone. Me always.
Against this useless flesh, impure, still too alive. Against this heart — that traitor — that still beat, as if it still believed in the right to exist. Against this indecent breath, which kept escaping from my throat despite my will for silence. Against these hands I hadn’t severed, against these eyes that kept absorbing everything without ever forgetting, against this tongue that hadn’t known how to say "stop" at the right time.
And above all... against this world. This ground. This lukewarm, living, welcoming ground — this ground that dared to sneak under my steps, coil under my nerves, climb into me through every fiber, to dig where I had sworn never to return. Where I had buried. Where I had thrown, without name, without grave, without ceremony, the pieces of a self I had never wanted to face.
And it dug. It scratched. It breathed there, in the mud of my memory, in the nameless folds, in the poorly washed corners of my childhood. It crept in without violence, without force, but with that insidious tenderness one can’t repel without wounding. It gently opened the doors I had bricked shut with claws, screams, refusals. It violated me, yes, but with love.
I fell to my knees, without a sound, without crash, without theater. Slowly. Very slowly. As if the world, after having stretched a thousand traps, a thousand arms, a thousand abysses, had suddenly decided to let me go, not in a burst of pity, but in that ambiguous, almost tender gesture one reserves for already broken beings.
As if I were no longer a burden to be repelled, but a shard of pain gently laid down, like a fragile memory stored in a corner too bright of the mind. And maybe... maybe it had welcomed me. Not as a savior. Not as a father. But as that strange ground that, since always, refused to judge me, even when I begged it to.
Around me, the blades of grass shivered. Alive. Conscious. Too present. They pressed against my bare skin with a soft insistence, too soft to be innocent. They slid over my fingers, my legs, my bent back, like caresses I had not asked for.
And yet, they were there. Supple. Shiny. Almost silky. Like vegetal tongues come to suck my wounds without closing them. Like invisible mouths, placing translucent kisses on every still open scream. It was a tenderness that stuck. That burned. A kindness so benevolent it became obscene.
And they sang. Again. Always. Very low. Too low. A barely audible note, but omnipresent, insidious. A litany of murmurs without lips. A lullaby without words. A hum of ancient love, woven into the air, into the fibers, into the memory of the world itself.