The world turned over… and so did I

She spoke again.

Not loudly.

Not with the authority of those who impose, nor the solemnity of those who teach.

Just… with that tone that no longer tries to convince, because it already knows it struck true. A low voice, bare, suspended somewhere between intimacy and inevitability. A voice you can't push away, because it demands nothing.

— You want to punish yourself, she murmured, like someone gently touching a wound they know too well.

— But you also want… to be loved.

— In spite of everything.

And I fell.

Not from injury.

Not from muscular exhaustion.

But because those words, carried without weapons, had split something in me that even blades had never reached. Because they said exactly what I had never dared to put into words. That contradictory, indefensible need I had carried in silence: to annihilate myself… but be saved. To be hated… and be loved all the same.