The worst thing about the mark is not seeing it.
The worst thing is remembering it when it is no longer there.
It appears before I wake up.
Not completely.
Only a fragment.
A curve.
An edge.
The memory of a circular shape on skin.
And for a few seconds I still do not know where I am.
Yet I am already thinking about it.
I try to get up.
I try to begin the day.
Make coffee.
Prepare food.
Wash a glass.
Answer messages.
Do any of the ordinary things a normal person should be able to do without effort.
And yet the mark appears again.
Not because it hurts.
Not because it is still important.
But because it remains.
And permanence is precisely the problem.
Sometimes I catch myself looking at the same area of my body without realizing it.
Not because I expect to find anything.
The mark is almost gone.
I know that.
I can see it.
And still I keep checking.
As though some hidden part of me expects to find exactly the same trace.
Exactly the same circle.
Exactly the same evidence.
That is the embarrassing part.
Not the memory.
The checking.
The absurd need to verify something I already know perfectly well.
I read.
I work.
I watch videos that have nothing to do with any of this.
Documentaries.
Interviews.
News.
People talking about completely unrelated things.
And suddenly something connects.
A gesture.
A pause.
A certain way of speaking.
And my mind returns.
Then I think about Sade.
Not the scandal.
Not the fantasies.
I think about his fascination with traces.
With consequences.
With the things that remain after the event itself is over.
And suddenly I understand something I would rather not understand.
The mark was never really the mark.
The mark was the proof.
Because the real problem began afterward.
When it disappeared.
When the skin returned to looking ordinary.
When there was no longer any objective reason to keep thinking about it.
And yet I kept thinking.
Perhaps even more.
Time solved nothing.
That is the most uncomfortable part to admit.
Time did not erase the fixation.
It refined it.
Made it smaller.
Quieter.
More intimate.
Now it no longer appears as an image.
It appears as a question.
A sensation.
A strange inclination of thought.
A need to return to something that has already ended.
And sometimes, just before sleep, the most uncomfortable idea of all appears.
That perhaps I have spent more time thinking about the absence of the mark than the mark itself.
And that difference is far harder to explain.
The neck has locked I should…
