Anthesis of Sadness

I did not reach out my hands to grasp. Not out of restraint, nor out of fear of disturbing the fragile balance of what was unfolding there, but because I knew — with a certainty that had no name, but already held the texture of the body — that touching was not necessary, that what was presenting itself to me could not be received by the skin, nor even intercepted by a gesture, however gentle, however bare it might be, because it did not ask for action, but for space, not for impulse, but for porosity. It was less about opening than about forgetting oneself. Less about reaching than becoming porous. It was not about wanting, but about letting it happen.

I did not need to touch, no, because what he was returning to me... did not weigh anything. Not even a little. It was not an object. Not a weight. Not a substance. It was a breath, too old to still seek a form, too old to even desire having one anymore. It slid between his fingers without sound, without friction, like a memory passing through a body without resistance, a vibration, a lukewarm warmth, a formless pulsation, almost without direction — like an idea that had been left to sleep for so long it had forgotten its own name, its own voice, and which came back now, fragile, trembling, without language. A presence that hesitated, as if it too doubted whether it still had the right to exist.

I did not grasp it. It would be false to say I received it. It was not handed over, nor offered, nor transmitted with intention. It came. To me. Not through movement, not through distance, but through gliding. Directly. Not into the hands. Not into the eyes. Not into the skin.

Into the chest.

And there was neither pain, nor piercing, nor impact. It struck nothing. It split nothing. It did not impose itself.

It integrated.

And that moment, though so tenuous, so invisible, provoked a strange reaction, almost imperceptible, but total — a shiver, fine, precise, just under the sternum, as if the flesh had remembered too late that it had been crossed, as if a light wave, soft but unusual, had nestled where nothing had pulsed for a long time. A new pulsation, timid, but obstinate, as if the body had been brushed by a season it believed lost.

And yet, in this strangeness, I knew immediately. It was not an intrusion. It was not a gift from elsewhere. It was mine. Or more precisely: it had been. But what I recognized was not what I was expecting. It was not a return. It was not a restoration. It was a misalignment. A persistence from a former self I had never really known how to name, and which, nonetheless, returned to me with the quiet obviousness of an organ one hadn’t quite lost. Something that had survived, not by strength, but by forgetfulness — and which now flowed back to me like a soft but distorted memory.

But the more I felt it vibrate... the more something in me opposed it.