Anthesis of Sadness

I stayed facing her.

Or rather: facing myself.

Because that form frozen in the wall — that reflection without reflection, that silhouette embedded in a matter too alive to be inert, too mute to be empty — kept mimicking what I was, but with a cruel shift.

A shift that didn’t say: "you are late." But: "you are fleeing."

She didn’t repeat my gestures. No. She didn’t imitate what I was doing. She replayed what I was holding back. Every silenced hesitation, every restrained emotion, every interrupted breath — she embodied them. She carried them in my place. She made them visible.

That... tore me apart. Because she showed what I refused to admit: that my body was lying, but she, she was telling the truth.

So I tried.

Not to speak — I already knew the words would slip without reaching, that they would only brush the surface without ever cracking what needed to be.

I didn’t try to move either, nor to flee, nor even to understand.

I tried... to think differently.

Not in the sense of changing my mind, or inventing a way out. But in the sense of inhabiting the inside differently. Of moving within myself. Of stopping fighting against what was surfacing, and trying — just trying — to no longer censor, no longer sort, no longer classify. To let rise what I was used to swallowing. To accept that certain thoughts, certain images, certain sensations could exist without having to be corrected or pushed away. I tried to release the inner jaw. To lower the weapons of judgment. Just a little.