CHAPTER 240: WHAT I DON’T DARE SAY

There’s something pushing. Not a clear movement, not a sharp pain, not an isolated spasm, but a diffuse pressure, a slow density accumulating somewhere between the hollow of the belly and the throat, an inner weight without apparent origin, as if a breath too old to be named were slowly rising through me, not to explode, but to pass through — to glide, to infuse, to exist without my permission but with my shape.

It’s not a scream. There’s no outward tension, no violence, no will to burst. It’s not a word either, for there’s no contour, no choice of language, no formulation. It’s something else. A voice. Unformed. Undecided. Uninvited. A voice without timbre, without mouth, but lodged in me. A pre-verbal vibration, thick, contained, like a language before language that wouldn’t need to speak to be transmitted.

And it doesn’t want to come out. It wants to pass through. Not to be heard. Not to be listened to. But to inhabit. Not me. The space. The breath. The in-between. As if my body had never been designed to contain an identity, but simply to let pass what, coming from elsewhere — or from before — is still seeking a place, a path, a living texture to use in returning to the world.

And I... I no longer know how to stop it. Not because it’s stronger. But because I’m no longer really here to refuse. Because I didn’t say no. Because I didn’t say yes either. Because I stood there, open without admitting it, porous without wanting to be, like a threshold never closed.

And it’s not even submission. It’s worse. It’s lucid fatigue, a soft resignation, without cry or fall. As if having held on too long had stretched my fibers, slackened my membranes, until they became passable. Until I ceased to be a container.

And the swamp... knows it. It no longer holds me back. It no longer slows me. It no longer opposes. It softens. It opens. It becomes acoustic. No longer a matter that absorbs, but a stretched skin, a soft and moist sounding board, as if the entire world had tuned itself to let this thing pass through me.

Even the air has changed texture. It no longer weighs, it vibrates. It doesn’t touch me — it tunes me. As if every molecule had received the instruction to let me be conducted. I’m no longer in a place. I’m in a tone. I feel it.

And what troubles me most, perhaps, isn’t feeling this thing pass through me, but noticing that nothing in me truly resists. No revolt, no rejection, no clash. As if my flesh had long prepared itself, in silence, for this passage. As if, for days, weeks, maybe years, a slow orchestration had begun beneath the skin, an invisible adjustment of my fibers, of my nerves, of my inner silences — so that one day, without scream, without violence, the passage would be possible.

It’s not me speaking. It’s her. This thing. This unborn voice. This reversed breath now seeking an outlet, not to exist outside, but to take my form, borrow my folds, nest in my words without marrying them, speak through me without resembling me.

She rises. Slowly. Not like a surge, but like a decision. Not like a repressed cry, but like a patient intention. She rises, yes. But it’s not an ascension. It’s a reversed sedimentation, a sinking into the air, as if space itself were turning inside me to lift her. And the more she rises, the more I descend. I feel my thoughts unravel, my name blur, my memories lose their edges — not because she erases, but because she covers. Because she overlays something older, wider, surer onto me.

Like a will that doesn’t need my agreement. That waits, not for me to consent, but for me to exhale. First, I feel the air grow heavy. Then, I feel the throat adjust. Then the jaw tense. And finally, the tongue tremble, not to pronounce, but to open to something not born from it.

And that, I believe, is what scares me most. Not that she exists. But that she knows what she wants to say. And I don’t.

And that’s where I get lost. Because I feel that I’m still here, that my nerves tremble, that my breath exists — but it’s no longer entirely mine. As if I were half alive, half lent. As if my body had accepted a tenant without warning me, and I was no longer anything but the corridor where footsteps echo that don’t belong to me.

Me, I’m empty. Full of silences. Full of knots, refusals, aborted sentences, prayers never spoken, requests too shameful to survive articulation. Me, I’m a reserve body, a collection of renunciations, a vase sealed by forgetting.

But she... she carries a discourse. Not a monologue. Not a truth. A flow. Something held, inherited, carried forward from a place or a time I didn’t choose. Maybe a voice from before my birth. Maybe a collective memory, entered into the matter of my blood without my knowing. Maybe not even a memory. A remanence. Something that remembers having been language, but never had a body to be it.

And now, this flow passes through me. It doesn’t jostle me. It fills me. It settles in. I feel it.

She pushes in my throat. It’s not an abstract rising. It’s a real pressure. A warm, pulpy, almost moist density, as if my trachea were filling with an ancient liquid, not to drown, but to lubricate the passage. My vocal cords vibrate without moving. My tongue trembles without speaking. And in my sinuses, a new warmth sets in, like an already-ready breath, a language in waiting.

She places her imprints on my jaws. She doesn’t seek to scream me. She seeks to say me. To say me in her way. And that way... is not mine.

She speaks with my reversed refusals, with my inverted silences, with my erased gestures. She wants to speak with what I never dared to ask. With what I silenced without even thinking it. With the gestures I prevented before even imagining them. She wants to articulate herself in my absences. She wants to remember through my voice.

I want to say no. I want to scream that I’m still me, that I’m not a conduit, not a vessel, not a mere instrument for a foreign voice. But that cry, I can’t find it. It has no foothold. It collapses on itself as soon as I try to form it. As if all my will had been slowly gnawed away, not by force, but by waiting. By the long time of a patient breath that knew, from the beginning, I would eventually yield.

So I clench my teeth. I dig my nails into my palms. I tense my throat. I hold my breath, block my diaphragm, I try to close myself, but... it’s not a scream I have to hold back. It’s a memory. A memory that recognizes me.

And my body knows it. It knows it too well. It’s preparing it, without my knowledge. It adjusts the breath. It softens the tongue. It relaxes the lungs just enough for the passage to occur without pain. My body is already welcoming it. It has begun to make it.

And I... I become a threshold. Not a wall. Not a dam. Not a rampart. A threshold.

And in that state of openness, I perceive something vaster. A resonance that comes from neither her, nor me, but from the gap itself. From the threshold. As if the universe, momentarily suspended, were listening. Not to what will be said, but to what will pass through. As if, in this mute tension, the world too awaited to be crossed. To be, itself, said differently.

And I feel that soon... she will pass. She will use my breath, my cage, my voice. And what she will say... I won’t understand right away. But I will remember. I will recognize it in my back. In my loins. In the exact space I thought empty.

And that memory... won’t be mine. But it will have passed through me. And I will no longer be able to say: it wasn’t me. Because it will have taken my voice. And my voice... I no longer own it. I share it. And that sharing... will have no equity. She will take more than me. And yet, I will know that it was just.