Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 155: Thoughts as Walls

Chapter 155: Thoughts as Walls

I was trembling. Not from a shiver of fear. Not from a frozen jolt coming from an outside too vast, too unknown, too silent. Not even from that dizziness one feels when a scream too ancient awakens in the chest. No, it wasn’t any of that. It wasn’t the cold, it wasn’t the stupefaction, it wasn’t the mystical dread of a world that had become too big for me.

It was rage.

Not a sharp anger, not a burning fury, not that theatrical storm we brandish at others while shouting their names. No. A muffled rage. Heavy. Ancient. A hatred without a target. Or rather, yes — but aimed. Directed. Not against the voices. Not against the distorted memories. Not against this world with soft entrails still holding me. Against me. Me alone. Me always.

Against this useless flesh, impure, still too alive. Against this heart — that traitor — that still beat, as if it still believed in the right to exist. Against this indecent breath, which kept escaping from my throat despite my will for silence. Against these hands I hadn’t severed, against these eyes that kept absorbing everything without ever forgetting, against this tongue that hadn’t known how to say "stop" at the right time.

And above all... against this world. This ground. This lukewarm, living, welcoming ground — this ground that dared to sneak under my steps, coil under my nerves, climb into me through every fiber, to dig where I had sworn never to return. Where I had buried. Where I had thrown, without name, without grave, without ceremony, the pieces of a self I had never wanted to face.

And it dug. It scratched. It breathed there, in the mud of my memory, in the nameless folds, in the poorly washed corners of my childhood. It crept in without violence, without force, but with that insidious tenderness one can’t repel without wounding. It gently opened the doors I had bricked shut with claws, screams, refusals. It violated me, yes, but with love.

I fell to my knees, without a sound, without crash, without theater. Slowly. Very slowly. As if the world, after having stretched a thousand traps, a thousand arms, a thousand abysses, had suddenly decided to let me go, not in a burst of pity, but in that ambiguous, almost tender gesture one reserves for already broken beings.

As if I were no longer a burden to be repelled, but a shard of pain gently laid down, like a fragile memory stored in a corner too bright of the mind. And maybe... maybe it had welcomed me. Not as a savior. Not as a father. But as that strange ground that, since always, refused to judge me, even when I begged it to.

Around me, the blades of grass shivered. Alive. Conscious. Too present. They pressed against my bare skin with a soft insistence, too soft to be innocent. They slid over my fingers, my legs, my bent back, like caresses I had not asked for.

And yet, they were there. Supple. Shiny. Almost silky. Like vegetal tongues come to suck my wounds without closing them. Like invisible mouths, placing translucent kisses on every still open scream. It was a tenderness that stuck. That burned. A kindness so benevolent it became obscene.

And they sang. Again. Always. Very low. Too low. A barely audible note, but omnipresent, insidious. A litany of murmurs without lips. A lullaby without words. A hum of ancient love, woven into the air, into the fibers, into the memory of the world itself.

It didn’t lull. It dug. It didn’t console. It insisted. It infiltrated my spine, coiled around my nerves, clung to my silences, and each note reminded me that I was seen. That I was felt. That I was recognized.

But I... I heard nothing anymore. Or rather: I refused. I refused the world to keep brushing me with its sick song, with its mushy love, with that sticky benevolence it obstinately inflicted on me like a poisoned caress.

I blocked my ears — but not with my hands. My arms remained limp, empty, inert. It was my thoughts that raised the walls, my thoughts I folded onto themselves like soiled sheets, that I crumpled, that I twisted, that I pressed so hard against my skull that nothing, absolutely nothing could get through. Not a note. Not a breath. Not a trace of that intrusive tenderness.

I barricaded myself. Mentally. Completely. Like a child squeezing their eyelids to make the monster disappear.

Except the monster, here, was warmth. That warmth. Crawling. Muffled. Patiently loving.

It still sought to surround me, to pour around my neck like a scarf too soft, like a mother’s shawl laid on a corpse still too warm.

And I, I didn’t want that. I didn’t want that attention. I didn’t want to be comforted. I didn’t want to be seen as something that could still be retrieved, still saved, still loved.

I refused to remember. I refused to feel. I refused to receive. Like one shuts their mouth in front of the last spoonful of a meal they never asked for.

I didn’t want that light anymore. I didn’t want to hear that voice, even silent. I didn’t want the world to look at me with anything other than contempt or silence.

I wanted... I just wanted to continue being alone. Truly alone. Absolutely alone. A void that no longer throbs, that no longer reaches for anything.

A total silence. A definitive refusal. An extinction.

No cry. No arms. No forgiveness. Nothing.

Nothing but me. Me without me. Me without love. Me without return.

And then... there was the voice.

Not a cry. Not an invocation. Not even a foreign thought.

Just that sentence. That simple statement, placed in space like a tear on a cheek one is not allowed to wipe:

— But you never were.

I turned my head. With a sharp snap. Too sharp. Like an animal caught in a trap, betrayed by a sound too close, a warmth too sudden.

My breath cut off, as if my lungs refused to inhale what had just been said. My fangs sprang out without my deciding. My back arched. My gaze scanned the space.

But there was nothing.

Nothing human. Nothing tangible. No silhouette standing on the horizon. No face hidden in the grass. No throat to have carried that sentence.

Just the grass. That slow, undulating sea, too soft, too peaceful. Those green blades that swayed as if the world, at that instant, had heard nothing. Said nothing. As if all this was just a dream — or worse, an obvious truth.

And yet, I still felt it. That voice.

It didn’t resonate in the air. It vibrated elsewhere. Lower. Closer. Inside.

It had anchored itself in my organs, lodged in the fold of my rib cage, placed right in the hollow of my stomach, where truths one never knew how to digest accumulate.

It asked for nothing. It did not scream. It did not impose.

It spoke.

It spoke as one places a hand on a bare shoulder, without weight, without demand. It spoke with that brutal gentleness only the oldest truths possess — the simplest, the most cruel.

It bore neither threat, nor pity, nor rage. It existed. Right there. Grave. Warm. Irrefutable.

And within me, something... wavered.

Not fear. Not anger. Just that tiny, insidious sensation, the one you feel when a crack widens by a millimeter somewhere in the structure.

I knew it.

Not with words. Not with thoughts. Not even with that ordinary awareness we use to decode the world.

I knew it in a more ancient way, more profound, more animal — in the hollow of my bones, in the imperceptible tightening of my joints, in the silent vibration that climbed along my neck like a drop of cold injected into the marrow.

I knew it in the tension of the temples, in the almost electric tingling behind my eyes, in the suspended breath of the air which, all of a sudden, had frozen around me like a skin pulled too tight.

I knew it because everything froze.

The ground. The grass. The pale light. Even my own thoughts, softened by the effort of refusal, stopped spinning in loops.

Everything, around and inside me, curled up for a moment like an animal on alert.

And in that folding of the world, in that moment of waiting where nothing moved anymore, I understood.

I hadn’t seen anything yet.

And what was coming... wouldn’t be a spectacle.

It would be a truth.

After some time — how long? I no longer know.

The seconds had dissolved in a soft, stretched, sick eternity, like a lukewarm fluid seeping into every fold of my being to lull it gently.

And then, at a moment I did not choose, I stood up.

Not in a leap. Not in rage. But with that broken slowness, the one that comes not from a wounded muscle but from a soul bent too long.

I stood up like one slips out of a worn dream, like one extracts themselves from a ground become a refuge for lack of better.

It was a gesture without hope. A movement of instinct, repeated by a carcass that no longer knew how to stop without disappearing.

I stood with the ancient weariness of those who no longer believe in rest, with the bodily memory of beings who have wandered too much to still believe one can one day lie down without dissolving.

So I resumed my walk.

Again. Always. Inevitably.

Not because there was still a path, not because a goal awaited me somewhere — but because immobility would have been too blatant a surrender, too painful, too full of confessions.

I crossed the field, that undulating green sea, that vibrant ground that had tried to speak to me, to contain me, to cradle me again like a child one never knew how to comfort other than by keeping them upright.

And the blades of grass, behind me, had gone silent.

Not in a hostile silence. Not in a contemptuous silence.

A silence... respectful, almost ashamed.

As if this world, for the first time, had understood that it must leave me alone.

Or perhaps, more cruelly, that it had decided to let me believe in this solitude.

Let me hope, if only for an instant, for a peace stripped of tenderness.

But even as I walked away, even as I tore myself from their caresses, from their whispers, from their nervous kisses on my soiled skin, I still felt them.

Their passage persisted. Their memory clung to my ankles like a remnant of fever, a spectral contact, a sensory thread too soft not to be toxic.

Their song, almost faded, still lingered in the air, brushing the back of my neck with a moist, muffled shiver, impossible to shake off.

I no longer wanted to hear it. I no longer wanted to hear anything.

I wanted to forget everything. Erase everything. This world, its sounds, its caressing illusions, its insidious lights, its heartbeats soft as traps.

I wanted to empty myself. Dissolve myself. Subtract myself from all trace, all image, all memory.

I no longer wanted to be. Not even a remnant.