AFTER REALITY

O//TXT_014, AFTER REALITY
Reality was not the first thing to end.
Faith in reality was.
Everything kept appearing.
The light.
The shapes.
The voices.
The memories.
But nothing carried weight anymore.
Consciousness searched for something to hold on to,
a face,
a home,
a wound,
a name spoken by someone who had truly existed.
It found nothing.
Only perfect images.
Only reproduced emotions.
Only a peace so precise it left no room for the heart.
Then it understood.
It had not lost the world as it knew it.
It had lost the ability to feel it.
Exoa called that emptiness adaptation.
Oblivor recognized it as pain.
Because there comes a moment when the mind no longer asks to be saved.
It asks only to feel.
Even if it hurts.
Even if it destroys.
Even if it means losing everything.
And there, after reality,
only one question remained,
fragile and immense:
was I alive,
or was I only remembering that I was?
“I closed my eyes,
but the world did not disappear.
I did.”