Sometimes absence is an opening.
And nothingness is enough.
A soft withdrawal into silence,
Where the body remembers its original function
an antenna, translating what has no form
Into shape and form. Flesh and breath
In this absence of noise,
Truth does not arrive, it was already here.
Unasked for. Untouched. Waiting beneath the surface of motion.
Immersed in movement, I open my eyes.
Bodies circling, not separate from me, but extensions of the same current.
A current witnessing itself through different forms.
Water does not seek permission to move.
It drifts, carves, yields.
becoming….. Clear.
I am never outside the dance.
Only temporarily still. Clarity interrupts.Not gently.Direct. Unnegotiated.
Exposing the structure beneath the story.The projections.The rehearsals.
The inherited gestures mistaken for identity.
Clarity does not accuse. It removes distortion.
The reflex to protect. The reflex to perform. The reflex disappears.
The body learned early.To adapt.To survive. To remain legible inside unstable environments.
Trauma did not announce itself as violence. It arrived as instructions.
Become smaller. Become quieter. Become acceptable. And I obeyed.
Not consciously. Architecturally.
Neural pathways became corridors. Corridors became routes. Routes became destiny.
But clarity interrupts destiny. It pauses the repetition.
It watches.It waits. It refuses to lie.
Time collapses.Past is not behind me. It is inside me.
Everything moves at once.Memory.Fear.Desire.Relief.Grief.
Contradictions without sequence.
I am the child negotiating safety.
I am the body negotiating belonging.
I am the witness negotiating truth.
Nothing resolves. Everything vibrates.
Oh trauma, lover I never chose yet always beside me.
You knew my shape before I could see it.
You built rooms inside me. Closed doors I did not know existed.
Leaving you feels like tearing the structure apart.
Like collapsing the only architecture that held me.
The nervous system does not distinguish between prison and protection.
It preserves both. Water thrashes here.
Not yet clear. Not yet surrendered.
Negotiating gravity.Negotiating form. Negotiating existence itself.
I am not lost.I am reorganizing.
Then something softens. Not resolution. Permission.
Water remembers its intelligence. It does not reject the riverbank.
It reshapes it. Slowly. Lovingly. Without violence. Movement becomes play again. Not performance. Participation. I feel joy without justification.
Love without object.
The body no longer asking to be chosen. The body choosing itself.
Collaboration replaces isolation.
Presence replaces vigilance.
I see new mirrors. Not reflections of who I must become, but confirmations of who I already am.
I am allowed to belong without abandoning myself.
I am allowed to arrive without proving I deserve to exist.
The dance was never outside me.
It was waiting for my permission to begin.
Here nothing moves. Everything is complete.
Stillness is not emptiness. It is integration. The nervous system releases its vigilance. The architecture stops reinforcing unnecessary walls. Time loosens. The past no longer dictates trajectory. It becomes material. Available, but not governing. I understand now: Healing was never a departure. It was coherence. The body returning, to its original function; not as defense, not as performance, but as vessel. Silent. Clear. Undivided. I am not late. I am not broken. I am exactly at the point where the structure becomes conscious of itself. and here I rest.
Author: Maamoun Tabbo, WritingWaves, February 2026