Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 222: What I Released

Chapter 222: What I Released

I thought I had left it behind. That wall. That reflection. That sentence engraved in the hollow of my memory like a burn that no walking could erase. And yet... I had barely left the previous room, barely stepped into the next space — when I felt it again. Not like a memory, nor even like a ghost. But like a gentle, insistent pressure, a formless presence lurking in my flesh, returned to coil around my bones without asking for permission.

Something hadn’t disappeared.

Something hadn’t accepted that I’d left.

A breath. But not mine. Not a wind, either. Nothing external, nothing identifiable. It was something else — something slower, deeper, more solemn than silence itself. A detached breath, without mouth, without lungs. A breath that didn’t try to be heard, but that persisted nonetheless, with that discreet regularity, almost stubborn, as if it were breathing through the world or through me.

And it came from behind me.

I didn’t turn around.

Not right away.

There was no fear, not really — just that muffled tension, that stifled shiver in the neck, that way the air seemed to grow denser, fuller, as if that breath wasn’t content to be perceived... but was waiting for an answer.

A recognition.

Or a confession.

I froze. Not out of fear. Nor even restraint. But out of intuition. One of those silent intimacies between the body and space, between what one senses without thinking and what one refuses to name because naming it would give it shape. I didn’t want to turn around. Not because I feared what might be waiting — but because I knew, with a dull certainty, what I would find. Or rather, what I absolutely must not try to see.

Because it wasn’t an external presence. Nothing that still belonged to the world.

It was what I had displaced.

What I had awakened, without even understanding it, by speaking that sentence — not an ordinary sentence, not a word one can erase. A sentence that had cracked something, somewhere. A minuscule fault, imperceptible to the eye, but gaping inside. And the breath, that breath... was only the echo of it.

An echo from me.

But that was no longer really me.

A fragment of me. Not a double. Not a ghost. Not a haunting or reproducing image. Just... a remnant. Something ancient, expelled, perhaps rejected — but never truly gone. A breath torn from the depths of the throat, detached from me by the words I had spoken, and which, since then, wandered at the edge of my steps, of my breath, of my silences.

It wouldn’t leave me.

Because it wasn’t done.

Because I wasn’t.

It didn’t frighten me. Not really. It wasn’t a clear, frontal fear, the kind that springs up and can be pushed away. It was something else — an opaque awareness, embedded just beneath the skin, like a breath that no longer belonged to me, but that still insisted on breathing through me.

But it was there.

Simply. Inexplicably. Like a trace that cannot be erased without tearing oneself with it. Like a part of me too ancient to still be mine, but too intimate to become foreign.

And I knew, without yet being able to admit it to myself, that it would no longer leave.

Every step I took brought it closer — not in space, no, not right behind my heels or in the shadow of my gestures... but in my skin. I felt it slide beneath the epidermis, slowly settle into the forgotten hollows of my flesh, like a memory infiltrating through the pores, without violence, without sound, but with the insidious persistence of something that knows it will never be driven out again.

It breathed in my rhythm. Exactly. Or almost.

Always with a slight delay.

Barely perceptible, but enough to create an echo. A soft, troubling dissonance, like an off-beat pulse, or the memory of an ancient breath refusing to die.

Like a dull pain one ends up accepting, out of exhaustion, out of avoidance — but which always comes back to sit within us, when everyone sleeps, when there are no more voices, no more gestures, no more light to provide diversion.

And then, it stays. It waits.

It inhabits us without asking.

I closed my eyes.

And I knew.

What I had said... what I had thought I’d exorcised by voicing it, what I had imagined I could mend with confession, through the almost solemn utterance of that truth whispered to the wall — I hadn’t healed it.

I had released it.

Freed it from its chains, torn it from its mute casing. I had given it a form. A breath. A place in the world. And now, it walked with me, calm, silent, patient. As if all of this were only a beginning. As if it had waited for this moment to finally stand upright.

Now, it walked with me. Not like a threat lurking in my shadow, not like a danger ready to strike — but like a trace. An ancient imprint, embedded in the step, in the breath, in the fold of the body that remembers before the mind understands. It was no longer there to haunt me. It no longer sought to frighten me.

It had become a continuation. A thread.

And that trace... I no longer had to flee from it.

I no longer had to bury it under other gestures, other sentences, other piled-up silences to smother it. I had to hear it. Let it resonate with every breath, without trying to cover it, without wanting to impose a rhythm other than its own. I had to let it live beside me, within me, like an off-beat melody one finally stops correcting.

And maybe then, only then... it would eventually fall silent on its own.

I didn’t want to sleep. I clung to that without reason, like one struggles against a current known to be inevitable, not out of fear of sleep, but out of fear of what it dissolves — the boundaries, the markers, wakefulness itself. But the silence... that silence... had that strange, enveloping texture, that of a warm mist, a weightless night, an interior without walls, where one drifts without knowing at what moment the body stops holding and where the mind begins to fade gently.

A silence that doesn’t impose itself... but always ends up pressing inward.

And my legs, by trying too hard to remain upright, alive, anchored in the fragile verticality of a will held by exhaustion, had ended up forgetting their purpose. They had no meaning anymore. No reason. They still held, yes, but without believing in it. By reflex, perhaps. Or out of shame at falling.

But they had already collapsed inside.

I sat down, slowly, like one lays down a weight no longer bearable. Then I lay down. Not to sleep, not really — I knew it, I felt it —, but to be quiet a little more deeply. To let the body join the ground, not as surrender, but as a more ancient form of silence, denser, more inward, where even the breath retreats, where even thoughts fade out of respect. It wasn’t sleep I was seeking.

It was the hollow.

The hollow before the fall. The hollow before the word. The hollow where nothing yet rises.

And slowly, without really wanting it, without even deciding, I let myself go. Not far. Not elsewhere. Just... to the other side of me. A barely perceptible slip, almost imperceptible, as if a softer, more tired version of my being came to lie down in my place, inside, in silence.

Sleep wasn’t deep. It opened no door, took me in no warmth.

It wasn’t gentle either — it had neither tenderness, nor forgetting, nor embrace.

But it was real.

Dense. Present. Strangely alive, like a dark room I would have entered without light, without baggage, without voice.

And I was there. Without dream. Without sound.

Just... there.

In that in-between, that suspended place between sleep and what is not yet a dream, something came. I didn’t hear it. I didn’t see it. No sound, no movement, no shiver betrayed its approach. And yet... I felt it. Not as an intrusion, nor even as a contact, but as an invisible density, an absent pressure, a strange volume that weighed on nothing — neither air, nor breath, nor skin — and yet surrounded me entirely.

It was a presence that pressed on nothing, displaced no breath, no fabric, no muscle... but that enveloped me.

Not like a coat.

Like a hand laid without weight on the inside of me.

And in that instant, I knew it wasn’t a visit.

But a return.

She didn’t touch me. There was no contact, no shiver, no warmth on the skin. And yet... I felt held. Not squeezed. Not captive. But contained. As if the air itself, slowly, had learned my shape, had followed its folds, its angles, its wounds, and had decided, without gesture or intent, to adapt to it. As if, around me, the world no longer exerted pressure... but memory.

My contour was recognized.

Not loved. Not repaired. Not consoled either.

Just... accompanied.

And in that almost nothing, in that absence of effort, there was something infinitely fragile. As if someone was telling me: you can stay here, like this, even if you no longer know how to be.

And stranger still: she matched my pain. Not to soothe it, nor to take it away. She didn’t try to heal it, nor to erase it like one crosses out a poorly written word. She simply followed it, slowly, like a finger slid along an old scar — not to understand it, not to question it, but to say it had been seen. And that gesture, almost nonexistent, almost unreal, carried neither consolation, nor promise. It weighed nothing. And yet... it stayed.

It settled right on the edge, at the border of nerve and memory, in the curve of silence, exactly where pain becomes name — but never says it.

And it waited.

Without waiting for anything.

I didn’t move. Not for fear of breaking a fragile balance, but because I didn’t want her to leave. Because what she was — or what she did by being almost nothing — depended on so little, on a presence just at the threshold, on a breath held in hollow. And she... never imposed. She crossed no threshold. Forced no space. She existed just enough. Enough to be felt, to be believed, for her presence to be not a doubt but a murmur.

As if she said to me — without voice, without words: I do not heal you. I do not repair you. I am here.

And that "here", in its mute strangeness, was enough.

It was enough.

Because it expected nothing.

Me... I had nothing left to give.

And that... that alone, in its silent restraint, in its absence of promise, in its way of being neither intrusion nor rescue... was already more than anything I had ever believed possible. More than anything I had hoped, without ever daring to name it. More than anything I had left behind, convinced that such a presence did not exist — or was not for me.

And yet, she was there.

Without weight. Without name. Without future.

But there.

And that was enough.

It even overflowed.