Anthesis of Sadness

So I started walking again. Once more. Without heroism, without illusion, simply because there was no other choice. But this time... everything was worse. Everything was doubled. The fatigue. The weight. The burn in my muscles. The breath ripped away with each step. The world itself seemed to have thickened, become unlivable, as if it wanted to prove I had learned nothing, accepted nothing. Every movement was a negotiation with collapse. Every second, a fall narrowly avoided. But I moved forward anyway. Because falling... would have been worse.

With each step, I felt like I was moving through a hostile world, a world that didn’t want me. As if the earth itself rejected me, forcing me to press down every foothold, every breath, to beg for my place on a path I hadn’t chosen. I walked... like an intruder.

The worst part, maybe, was this: nothing was straight anymore. Neither the steps, nor my back, nor my bones, which seemed to slowly twist under this damp, insidious heaviness, clammy like a living mold.

Even my thoughts lost their axis. They spun, scattered, panicked since the encounter with the statue — as if something in me had been unbalanced, shifted from its center, and could no longer find its equilibrium. Everything became slanted. Slippery. Unsettling. And I, in the middle of it, still tried to stand... though nothing held anymore.

Even the light seemed false. Too pale. Too flat. As if my eyes no longer knew how to look, as if the world had lost its depth. Everything was blurry without being so. Too sharp, too off-kilter.

And I had lost my bearings. I wandered through a sick geometry.

I stumbled every three steps. My balance was nothing more than a memory, a distant reflex lost in the drunkenness of effort. My legs no longer held me — they swayed, bent, barely resisted.

And my breath... scattered in my temples, beat against my skull like a chaotic tide, unable to feed anything but vertigo. I wasn’t walking anymore. I was slipping, jolting, fragmented, supported by nothing but an obstinate refusal to collapse.

I was cold. And hot. Both at once. My body didn’t know how to respond anymore. Every muscle vibrated off-beat, as if I were caught in a tremor only I could feel.

It wasn’t just the effort. It was a loss. A slow dissolution of everything still keeping me upright.

The child, meanwhile, wasn’t asleep anymore. He was awake. Silent, motionless, but entirely there. Not agitated. Not demanding. Just present. Pressed against me, against my chest, like a foreign heartbeat syncing with mine.