Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 228: The Misaligned Rhythm

Chapter 228: The Misaligned Rhythm

At first I thought it was my heart — not because it was pounding harder, nor faster, nor with that urgency that precedes collapse, but because a pulse, muffled, flat, strangely regular, began to beat with an abnormal density, not in the rhythm itself, but in the placement, as if the tempo had shifted a few millimeters to the left, or downward, or elsewhere, and it now resonated off-axis, in an area I had never inhabited, a new cavity that should never have received a heartbeat, but nonetheless sheltered one — and it was this dissonance, this insidious misalignment between the regularity of the motion and the inadequacy of its source, that made me believe, at first, that it was my heart.

A beat too dense.

A poorly tuned rhythm.

A misaligned pulse.

But it wasn’t the cadence itself that troubled me — it was what it implied, what it revealed, quietly, without pain or shock, but with that restless constancy of presences one hasn’t invited but feels settling in — and very quickly, I understood. Not with a thought. Not with a flash of meaning. I understood through the flesh. Through the breath. Through the inner tension of deep tissues. Through the way the body, despite itself, recognizes what is not its own. It wasn’t an organ. It wasn’t a muscle. It wasn’t me.

It was a breath. Lodged there. Lodged in a place that hadn’t existed until now. Hidden between the folds of the diaphragm and silence, between the memory of my former pains and the empty space left by what I had never known how to welcome. A foreign breath, yes — not implanted, not grafted, not imposed — but inscribed, installed, soft in its presence, intact in its form, and so strangely familiar that I could no longer tell if it came from far away... or from too close.

It didn’t speak.

But it was ready to speak.

It didn’t announce itself.

But it was there, stretched in the hollow, patient, underground, like a voice without sound, like a word without mouth, like a form from before language come to breathe in a volume that no longer quite belonged to me. A waiting, sprawling, without direction, but so whole in its contained tension that it became almost a consciousness. Or at least a call without a subject.

I didn’t know what it belonged to — nor to whom, nor to what, nor even to what time. I didn’t know if it came from a memory, a place, another, or a before I had never known — but I knew, with that nakedness of knowing that nothing carries, that this breath was not of me, even if it had chosen me. It had chosen me. Not for what I was, but for what I had become. It had settled there without forcing, like a slow evidence, like a memory finally finding its empty room. Like an ancient trace that had simply waited for a ground still capable of vibrating.

It didn’t scream.

It imposed nothing.

It didn’t try to exist.

It whispered.

And its whispers... were not words. Not even intentions. Not even thoughts. They were layers. Filaments. Unformed images. Echoes without source. Sound archives from an erased world, of memories never lived by me, but which seemed, nonetheless, to awaken in my breath, as if my ribcage were becoming, without my consent, the last sanctuary of a memory that no longer had a body. An orphaned memory that called to no one, but settled there, as one sets down a fragile light in the hollow of a night too vast.

These whispers had the density of a vanished language.

The shape of a refused forgetting.

The slow vibration of an orphaned song.

And because they passed through me this way — gently, obstinately, without jolt but without detour — I could no longer pretend not to hear them. I could no longer tell myself that it didn’t inhabit me. Because the body, itself, had already given in. It had opened something — a chamber, a fold, a memory of bone — and I could no longer close it.

I tried to stop. Not physically. But inwardly. I tried to suspend the line of breath. To open something. To slightly part the ribs, to let those layers rise into a somewhat freer space. As if listening could be enough to translate them. As if a tense silence, well held, could serve as a welcome.

But it wasn’t a sound.

It wasn’t even a silence.

It was a link.

A taut thread. Invisible. Vibrating. But not between me and another — between me and that breath. That breath, lodged in my chest but vibrating elsewhere, in thoughts, in hesitations, in every fringe of doubt. And the more I kept my breathing steady, the more I felt that link tune itself, become a string, become tension, become a vibration aligned with a word that would never come. A deferred word. Perhaps too ancient to still want to take shape.

Because it said nothing about me.

It didn’t enlighten me.

It told something else.

Someone else.

Or something from before.

Forms passed, yes, but blurry, untied, without name, without body, like shadows left by presences too old to have withstood the world, but not old enough to be erased from it. Suspended structures. Corridors full of emptiness. Songs without voices. A soft, living, bereaved matter, still weeping — not with tears, but with a slow vibration, like an unspoken grief. A matter that did not seek consolation, but a place. Just a place to tremble a little longer.

And in that matter, in that non-world without faces...

I saw myself.

Not as a child. Not as a man. Not as myself.

But as a passage.

An interface.

A point of transit between what still wanted to exist and what no longer had a place.

I was no one.

I was the passer.

The one who does not understand but who contains. The one who crosses without choosing, but who harbors — despite himself — the residues of a language too ancient to still be spoken. I was a womb. An echo chamber. A memory without memory. A listening. A ground. A habitable depth for something that no longer sought form, but only a little space.

And that voice — which was not a voice — I heard it now. Not with my ears. Not with my mind. But in the very line of the body. In that new axis of vibration that I had not built, but which resonated nonetheless with me. Like an unexpected chord, impossible, but just stable enough to vibrate through me.

It asked for nothing.

It expected no answer.

It only wanted — a listening.

Once.

Just once.

That’s all.

A habitable space, a body still capable of holding what it had once been.

And I, even without understanding... I listened.

I let it pass. I attempted nothing. I did not turn it into a symbol. I did not make it a calling. I did not try to integrate it, nor to expel it. I let it pass. I gave it my chest. I gave it my beats as a temporary shelter. Not as an offering, but as a place.

And that breath — that orphaned breath, come from a dissolved world — lived there, for a few moments, a few heartbeats, a few interstices between two silences, in a body that had never been its own.

Then it withdrew.

Perhaps.

Or not completely.

Because what has vibrated, even once, even in silence, even without form... never entirely leaves.

It remains.

Like a second rhythm, untuned.

But now inscribed.