The Abyss of Mirrors

Volcanic ash rises from the early hours of the night, and mysterious claws dig their edges into the middle of the wound. When the cities slept under blankets of light, I was haunted by delusions passing through closed windows. The wind carved away what remained of my body, crumbling my attempts at peace, and rearranging my features whenever I tried to hold myself together. There was no beginning on the horizon, nor end to the earth. I stood in no place, spun with golden threads, as if I were an echo of eternity that had not yet passed. Then an earthquake— we are now in the abyss, an abyss with no bottom and no top, no behind and no ahead. The mirrors around me shatter at their seams, reflecting me as a sparkle that crumbles between symbols. I tried to pick up a straw needle, a strand of words, a piece of bread that nourishes the soul of truth. But time was slipping away, like dreams slipping from the memory of a sleeping child. My body told me: ‘I am emaciated.’ So I laughed sarcastically, not mockingly, but in a farce that laughed at itself. I am by nature a humorous person, difficult to convince, let alone laugh. My being shook, as if my soul had never existed. But my heart remained silent, as if it no longer knew my language, or as if I had forgotten the language of hearts. Suddenly, a creature appeared before me. It was neither an angel nor a demon. It had eyes like a tiger's, sharp, beautiful, shining like swords. Its stature rose from the darkness like a mountain, but its voice was a whisper like a cool breeze. It said to me: "You are not the one looking for me, I am the one looking for you." My whole being trembled, and I felt as if I were standing before my former self, or perhaps before my future self, from a time yet to come. I sat listening to the silence, and I saw that the world is nothing but a recurring dream; we wake up to return to it, and we sleep to continue what we have missed of its chapters. Are we complete human beings? No. Are we incomplete demons? No. Perhaps we are the descendants of a lost creature, who fell from the edge of time, and forgot its instincts along the way. We live on what remains of our memory, we feed on nostalgia, and we die every day without knowing that we are dying. My soul is empty, like a well that has been dry for centuries. Everything inside me has become an echo, and every echo evaporates into the void. Perhaps I was a liar. Perhaps I was a charlatan. But I have not yet been burned, and there is still something breathing in my chest, something screaming that I have not completely disappeared. And so, between silence and words, between dreams and wakefulness, between certainty that cannot be proven and doubt that cannot be dispelled, I stood without bottom or top, without beginning or end. Perhaps I am the dreamer, and perhaps I am the dream itself. But I know one thing: that I possessed for a single moment a hidden essence, a moment that no one else saw...