Tiredness

I stepped forward. One step, then another, but each slower than the last, as if the world itself were becoming denser around me, or perhaps it was simply my body — emptied, twisted, undone — struggling to respond anymore. It wasn't hesitation. It wasn't fear. There was no more room in me for that kind of resistance.

It was something older. Deeper. A kind of surrender woven under the skin, something creeping, animal, that had supplanted any will to fight or return. I had become this body too heavy for itself, this fatigue piled up like years of rain on ruins. I wasn't moving toward a choice. I was simply going where the ground collapsed with me.

It was something else. A total exhaustion, absolute, almost sacred, as if every cell of my being had understood that this step, that path, called for no more.