I don’t hear them. I don’t read them. They don’t reach through the ear or the eye. But I feel them. Not like one feels a thought rising. No. Not that cognitive push, predictable, guided by a need for aning. It’s sothing else. Older. More basal. Like sensing a fever in the tongue before the body even acknowledges it. A strange heat, persistent, not painful but intrusive, lodged in the back of the mouth, in the gums, beneath the palate, at the exact spot where the breath folds before becoming sound. And what’s pushing there, gently, without jolt but without pause, has nothing of a symptom. It’s a presence.
And this presence asks nothing of . It doesn’t push, doesn’t devour, demands neither listening nor confession. It simply waits, like one waits for the sap to rise, like one waits for the weight of winter to leave the branches without even noticing. It is there, without threat, without gentleness, without intention. But its re existence creates a tension. A space to be filled. An inverted promise: that one day, I will have to respond — not to a question, but to a quiver. To a trace. To a form already written into my fibers.
And this presence... knows . Not like one knows soone. Not like a mory returning. But like a posture never left. A way of holding oneself without thinking. A tilt of the head, a palm closed too quickly, a shoulder slightly lower than the other. What pushes there — this word, this breath, this voice to co — does not erge from the present. It cos from blind spots. From zones I’ve abandoned. From fragnts of myself I’ve stopped questioning. From gestures worn by repetition, made invisible even to my own gaze. It cos from there. From what I’ve continued to be without seeing myself.
There’s no revelation in this ergence. Only an exposure. A turned surface. A mirror without reflection forcing to guess what I’ve always carried without looking at it. Maybe that’s what true language is, in the end: not what we na, but what we’ve never stopped becoming without saying it.
And yet... it speaks. Or rather: it wants to speak. Not to reveal a secret. Not to expose a fault. But to say exactly what I’ve never been able to formulate. And that’s what breaks more than any pain. It’s not the fear that it might say sothing horrible. It’s the terror that it might say sothing true. Just enough. Just what is needed. Just what I never had the courage to hear aloud.
I feel their shape. The words. Not their content. Their movent. Their arrangent. A muted cadence, an inner swaying, as if language had found its place without waiting for . As if my mouth had beco a shell, and aning, already ford elsewhere, ca to settle there from the inside, by capillarity, by silent recognition.
And the more I feel them assemble, the more I fall apart. It’s my very architecture that wavers. Not a thought, not a belief, but the soft matter linking my silences to my gestures, my unspoken things to my ways of sitting, of turning my eyes, of breathing out of ti. I feel my ntal joints slacken, my fuzzy attachnts, my invisible scaffolding — all that I built to avoid having to speak — falter under the insistence of a speech that never needed to exist.
As if my silence, once structural, were becoming brittle. As if every syllable prepared by a foreign mory were undermining the foundations of my muteness. I no longer keep quiet. I crack. And in every crack, there’s a word waiting. Not ready to co out. Ready to take root.
So I freeze. Not like one protects oneself. But like one avoids betraying. I hold my breath, I close my jaw, I swallow all pulses. Not to prevent a scream. But to guard the secret of what I’ve never known how to say. Because if I open now, if I let this trembling breath pass through, it won’t be speaking. Not the I know. It will be the other. The one from before. The one from elsewhere. The one from underneath. The one I covered with silence. The one I learned to ignore.
He doesn’t return. He doesn’t erge. He never disappeared. He just stopped knocking. But today, he no longer knocks: he slips. He seeps. He blends into my tissues like an old fever that doesn’t kill but distorts, curves, blurs. I thought him extinguished, I thought I had a choice. But it’s not a voice returning. It’s a I covered with walls.
And I feel, perhaps for the first ti, that my teeth are no longer enough. That they are not a barrier. That they are worn bones, polished by waiting, unable to hold back what cos from deep within, what does not want to co out but to be said. It’s not a voice seeking air. It’s a mory seeking form.
A mory that does not quite belong to , but can no longer belong to anyone else. It has settled like a discreet parasite, patient, almost kind. It doesn’t devour. It infiltrates. It bends to my breath. And the more I refuse it, the more it embraces my silences. It doesn’t want to exist through . It wants to exist through it.
And around , the world waits. Not the creatures. Not a consciousness. The swamp itself. The matter. The sheets. The suspended mbranes. The viscous breaths in the air. All those obscure tissues that do not look, but perceive. They do not listen. They suspend. As if already... they knew. As if they had heard what I’ve never said, and were waiting for to decide. To confirm it. To surrender. To finally admit it.
And if I don’t, it won’t be out of resistance. It will be from exhaustion. From collapse. From that soft form of cowardice we sotis mistake for the courage to keep silent. But here, even muteness becos an admission. Even refusal takes shape. Even flight becos posture. And everything looks at without eyes, without form, but with that terrifying certainty: that I no longer have a blind spot.
And what suffocates most is not their waiting — it’s their patience. Their lack of judgnt. Their open texture. As if everything here had been prepared to receive the speech I’ve never been able to allow myself. As if the world itself wanted to hear it in my place. Not to free . But to make silence impossible.
And that’s where panic changes form. It’s not silence I dread. It’s recognition. Because as soon as those words co out, as soon as they cross my lips, soone — or sothing — will know. And I will no longer be able to pretend. I will no longer be able to say I didn’t know. I will no longer be able to hide behind vagueness. I will no longer be able to flee into doubt. Because I will have beco what I said.
And I... I don’t want to. I don’t want to validate that mory. I don’t want to beco that word. I don’t want the world to pin down through a confession. I want to remain fluid. I want to remain that thing that hesitates, that trembles, that keeps its lips closed not out of fear, but out of fidelity to the unspeakable.
Because hesitation, in the end, is what remains of my freedom. Not choice. Not silence. The in-between. That suspension that delays the irreversible. That suspended beat where I am neither child nor adult, neither author nor oblivion. As long as I haven’t spoken, I’m not fixed. As long as I haven’t said it, I’m not incarnated. I am still breath. Still doubt. Still possible.
Because if I speak... I fix. And if I fix... I lose the gap. But I already feel that won’t be enough. Because the words... no longer want to speak them. They want to pass through . Like an old, thick, prelinguistic rumor that has waited too long at the edge of the world. And now, it chooses . It takes as threshold. It nas host. It moves through .
And this passage — I do not control it. It’s not possession. It’s not ecstasy. It’s a soft colonization, slow, polite. A way of reminding that my body is not just a shelter. That it can beco a place. A place of passage, of mory, of transmission. I am no longer a subject. I am a threshold. And sothing — maybe soone — is waiting for to yield.
She knows better than I do. She knows where my lips weaken, where my tongue yields, where my throat opens in secret. And what I don’t dare say... knocks. Not on my teeth. Not in my throat. But on the silence itself. And that silence... tightens. It no longer resists. It prepares.
And I remain there. One breath away from tipping. One breath away from becoming irreversible. And in that breath is everything I couldn’t carry. Everything I preferred to keep quiet. Everything I feared to embody. It’s no longer speech. It’s a birth. And I know, in that precise instant, that if it cos forth, I will never again be alone in my voice.
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