Anthesis of Sadness

I climbed the last step.

It vibrated beneath my feet, imperceptibly, as if it hesitated to be trodden, as if it was testing the legitimacy of my passage. A dull shiver, barely more than a breath, rose along my legs — but it did not give way.

It held firm.

And I, standing upon it, understood that it was not the step that trembled. It was me. My body. My story. Everything I carried. It was not a step like the others. It was a threshold. The final one.

It accepted me. Not because I was ready. But because, for the first time, I no longer wanted to flee. Because I was no longer the one who had entered here.

The world, behind me, collapsed. Literally.

I’m not talking about an image, a symbol, an inner impression. No. The ground opened, slowly at first, then with a muffled violence, like a body too long contained finally releasing the tension. The steps I had climbed — one by one, in pain, in silence, in fear — cracked, crumbled, disappeared. The staircase was unraveling, step after step, swallowed by a mist that no longer supported anything, that simply consumed, without return.

It was a calm collapse, without cries, without crash. Like a page that turns silently, but that can never be read again. And I, standing on that final threshold, did not move. I didn’t even turn around. There was nothing left to see. Nothing left to hold on to.

This world was not rejecting me. It was vanishing, because it had finished what it had to do. Because I had finished what I had to go through. Because that place... only existed as long as I refused to leave it.

The stairs unraveled, like knots slowly untied in the fog. Each curve, each link, each spiral loosened gently, without resistance, as if the world was finally releasing a tension it had held for too long.

The railings, they split with a mute sigh. Their lines, once stretched like offered arms or chains, broke with a strange grace, almost delicate — as if they had only ever served to hold back, to slow down, to watch over.