Joël

The sky, heavy and dark, seems to crush us with its melancholy, while here, by the fire, the warmth tries to mimic something that never quite becomes home.

The wood creaks, whispers secrets I cannot understand, and the flames dance with the weariness of one who knows they are doomed to burn out.

I watch them, searching for answers that are lost in the ashes, as if in their brief light I could find myself.

I think of the void, of that bottomless abyss that lives within me. There are no words to fill it, no fire to consume it. It is a silent presence, an eternal guest that sits beside me and says nothing.

The walls feel closer, as if the space were shrinking, as if everything were narrowing to this corner, to this rain, to this silence.

The fire burns itself out, just as I do, slowly, inevitably, leaving only ashes. And in them, perhaps, lies the truth I dare not face.

I walk among them, but I do not exist. My face is just another in the crowd, indistinguishable, irrelevant. I speak, but the words fall to the ground before reaching attentive ears. My actions are as fleeting as shadows dissolving in daylight. There is no interest, no curiosity, not even the disdain that might confirm my existence.

The things around me are just as transient. The objects that once belonged to me are now in the hands of others, forgotten as if they had never had a place in my life. The people with whom I shared something—a moment, a laugh, a fragment of trust—vanish like leaves swept away by the wind, leaving behind only the emptiness of what was never truly mine.

It is strange to realize that you stir nothing in anyone. No love, no hatred, no interest. It is like being trapped in a dream where everything you touch dissolves before you can hold onto it. And in the end, all that remains is the silence, that unbearable silence that screams what no one dares to say: you don’t matter.