I relived something. It wasn't a clear image, not a vivid memory imposing itself with force. It was more diffuse, more visceral. A sensation, a light, a breath… an ancient fragment that I had, I felt it, deliberately erased from myself. Not forgotten by time, but erased at the root. Suffocated. Set aside. Torn out so I would never feel it vibrate again.
And yet, it was there.
It had always been there.
Buried in a dark fold of my memory, lurking in the hollow of my chest or in the very fibers of my belly, that something was waiting for me. Motionless. Patient. And now, at the contact of that hand placed on me, it was rising slowly. It unrolled slowly through my nerves, my bones, my throat. It was taking shape again. It was becoming again.
How long had I carried that within me, without wanting to see it?
How many years, how many silences, how many escapes had been built to lock it away?
And why… despite the pain… couldn't I push it away?
A closet.
Small.
Cramped.
