Anthesis of Sadness

I first believed that my feet had simply sunk. That the ground, spongy, treacherous, had given way all at once beneath the moist weight of my slow walk, as if the floor itself, tired of carrying me, decided to become muddy, to offer my steps a soft bed, permissive, almost affectionate, to swallow me gently. But it was not a fall. It was not a collapse. There was no brutal slide, no tipping. It was slower. More intimate. A sinking. Progressive. Patient. A long, almost tender gesture from something lurking just beneath the surface, which did not wait for me to fall, but to yield — and which, without violence, without sound, without biting or strangling, had closed its invisible lips around my ankles, not to punish me, but simply... to hold me.

As if my feet were the only things still confident enough to believe they were outside of me, and the world, tired of waiting for me fully, had decided to start with them.

I saw no edge. No bank. No clear line. The world was no longer made of contours. There was only this matter. This sweet, viscous, warm density. A ground without ground. A flesh without limit.

Every molecule seemed to hesitate between rejecting me or welcoming me, as if matter itself did not yet know whether I was an intruder or an offering.

It did not push me away. It did not capture me. It absorbed me. With a slowness that was not sadistic, but ancient. Inexorable. And that was what scared me — not the loss of mobility, no, but this welcoming silence, this moisture without conflict, this way the world had of incorporating me as if I had always been part of its density, as if my form were just a temporary detail it was time to dissolve.

I tried to lift a leg, just one. A test. A surge of will. But the matter responded. Not by opposition. By attachment. It stretched with me, without yielding, as if it refused to break the bond.

There was no struggle. Just a strange, tenacious fidelity, which wanted to continue being part of me even when I tried to leave.

The resistance was not muscular. It was affective. A sticky fidelity. And when my skin finally emerged, slowly, from that soft embrace, it was black, shiny, oozing, covered with a liquid without odor, but at the exact temperature of my own blood — which made me shiver more deeply than any burn.

I remained there, suspended in a semi-step, between the desire to disengage and the obscure intuition that moving too fast would provoke something.

I felt, under my skin, zones vibrating at a rhythm I didn’t recognize. As if a part of me was slowly tuning to a foreign memory.

My body was no longer entirely mine. It floated in between, half melted, half swallowed, and something — yes, something — pulsed beneath me. A weak but regular rhythm. It wasn’t my heart. It wasn’t my breath. It was something else. A slow, diffuse, foreign breath, but synchronized with my own tempo.