The Weight That Wakes You

You were dreaming. The room held its breath, and the walls curled inward like old paper. Then came the weight — not imagined, but bodily — sudden, suffocating.

It was your father. Not standing beside you. Not watching from a doorway. But lying atop you — heavy, unmoving, pressing your ribs into surrender.

You couldn’t breathe. His form had the density of memory that refuses to die — all muscle gone, all voice reduced to a rasp, and yet he pressed down with the full gravity of the unsaid.

You tried to wake but found no seam in the world to tear open. You tried to call out, but your mouth filled with airless night. The ribs held. And trembled.

When the breath finally returned, it came not with relief but with rupture. You woke not alone — but ruptured open by inheritance, by grief, by the still-living weight of someone already halfway gone.

This is the terror that does not scream. It presses. This is Thanatos masquerading as father. This is Eros suffocated by love and lineage.

You were not visited. You were entered. By what still clings after the body forgets how to hold itself together.

And now — walking, breathing, remembering — you carry it. The echo of ribs that once cracked under love. The hush between inhale and scream. The dream that does not forget you.

Notitia: Attending to what flickers.