Where Collapse Begins

The body began in an embrace, not as a beginning but as an opening, skin against skin, weight against weight, warmth circulating freely as breath shortened and boundaries withdrew without being noticed, without anyone recognizing that this withdrawal was already a form of falling. Pleasure was movement—sliding, pressure, repetition—bodies folding into one another until their outlines dissolved, until form loosened and no destination was required, everything within that contact seeming sufficient. The body was still light then, still believed that experience could end where it occurred, that nothing needed to be carried forward. Yet the body was recording, not consciously but instinctively, for survival; every touch, every contraction settling deeper, layer by layer, as if from the very first moment the body had already begun preparing for what would come after. **The experience of pleasure was the starting point of collapse.** From there, nothing returns to its former place. Contact does not repeat, but its residue remains. Pain enters not as an event but as a return, the same path walked again, now alone. Where warmth once moved, pressure persists. Time begins here—not the time of passing, but the time of staying. Memory corrodes rather than preserves; each recollection abrades a fragment of tissue. The body grows tired without having moved, repetition becoming the dominant form of pain. Pleasure no longer appears, nor even its expectation. What remains is carried. The weight does not come from absence but from accumulation; nothing was ever released enough to become light. In the end, collapse is not a fall but a standing still inside a body that has become too full. Loneliness does not mean emptiness; it means being left alone with everything that has been experienced. The body remains, not because it is intact, but because all possible directions have folded inward. This is not the end of movement; it is the end of arrival.