I was climbing. Still. Relentlessly. Caught in that silent, hypnotic loop, where each step resembled the previous one without ever being quite the same, as if the path itself stretched as I tried to cross it. There was no end, no visible summit. Just this stubborn ascent, like a mute prayer thrown at a sky that no longer answered.
The child rested against my chest, light as a breath, like a shadow held barely by the thread of my breathing. But his weight was growing. Slowly. Insidiously. Not like a brutal load dropped all at once, but like a glass being filled, drop by drop, with implacable patience. A silent, invisible, yet real accumulation.
Nothing overflowed, nothing screamed. And yet, I felt the surface rise within me, slowly, inexorably, as if what he was — or what he held — was seeping into me without my being able to stop it.
