Anthesis of Sadness

I walked.

On the edge of the abyss.

One step after another, with the absurd slowness of bodies that no longer know if they’re moving forward or fading away. Nothing pushed me, nothing pulled me, and yet I kept going, as if by inertia. Each movement seemed to cost me more, not in strength, not in breath, but in existence itself. As if each step gnawed at me a little more, crumbled me inside, took away a part of my name, my outline, my flesh. I wasn’t walking to escape. Not to reach anything. I walked... to disappear. Not all at once. Not by falling. But slowly. Silently. As if the world, tired of holding me upright, had decided to undo me grain by grain, in this suspended, fragile walk, where the abyss, too, seemed to wait. Not to swallow me. But to recognize me.

How long had I been there? I couldn’t have said. Time, here, didn’t pass—it stretched, dissolved, folded in on itself until it became texture, weight, fatigue. I was in a world without end, without contours, without edges to bump into, without summit to reach, without exit to seek. A hollow world, but vast. A world too soft to be cruel, but too empty to console. A bottomless abyss, without walls, without sky, where even memories unraveled in the air before falling. And I... walked on, still. How many days had passed? How many nights without night? How many seasons without light? I had stopped counting. It wasn’t the hours that escaped me—it was me. How many versions of myself had I passed through to get here? How many dead skins left behind, without cry, without funeral? Sometimes I felt a part of me collapse without even resisting. A name, a fear, a rage. It extinguished. Just like that. And I continued. I wasn’t sure who I was anymore. But I knew... I was still there. Like a residual breath. Like a pain without edges. Like a remnant of myself.

How long had I wandered, aimlessly, without bearings, in this hell of blurred outlines, soft borders, sweet memories? I didn’t know. There was no beginning anymore, no end, no straight line in this labyrinth that twisted to the rhythm of my exhaustion. And it wasn’t a hell of flames, of chains or screams. No. It was worse. A hell of gentleness. A slow hell. Subtle. That doesn’t devour you—it cradles you. That doesn’t burn you—it wraps you. A hell of silence, of suspended gestures, of persistent tenderness, of memories too lukewarm to be erased, but too old to be carried. A hell all the more cruel because it looked like a refuge. And I... walked there. Still. As if my body had ended up believing that I deserved that kind of punishment: to be gently held by what I had never known how to keep.

How many times had I spoken to that hallucination? How many dialogues thrown into the void, without response, without body, without gaze? How many monologues muffled by my own ghosts, their faces trembling, recomposed from lack, rising from nothing but clinging to everything? How many introspections? How many apnea dives into the clammy darkness of my own chest? Digging, scraping, breathing too hard to dislodge something. To find the origin. The epicenter. The sick heart of this buried pain. This nameless pain. This pain that never expresses itself, but remains. That waits. That doesn’t want to end.

HOW LONG?

I didn’t know.

I didn’t know anymore.