Feeling the Master’s jaw close on my trapezius is not an attack.
It is a pause that is far too precise.
I need a second to understand whether I moved first.
I am not sure.
The pain arrives later, as if it needed permission to exist.
There is something strange in the way my body reacts.
It is not fear exactly.
It is recognition.
As if this contact were not happening for the first time.
I notice too late that I am trying not to breathe fully.
Not because I am told to.
Because something changes when I do.
Air stops being air.
I don’t know what it turns into.
Only that the body treats it differently.
The mark appears without me remembering the exact moment.
That should be the important part.
But it isn’t.
What matters is that it surprises me less than it should.
I look at the area where the teeth have left pressure.
I expect it to “change” when I observe it.
It doesn’t change.
Or it does.
Just not while I am looking.
The Heraldry of the Bruise
I don’t think of the mark as an injury.
That’s the strange part.
I am treating it as information.
As if it has something to tell me later.
I catch myself checking it again for no reason.
It isn’t curiosity.
It is verification.
There is a difference, but I can’t explain it properly.
I only know one leaves me calm.
The other doesn’t.
I have noticed something that bothers me more than the mark.
Not the mark itself.
But the moment I stop thinking about it.
As if there is an interval that does not belong to me.
The Consecration of the Marked Support
I don’t remember getting used to it.
But I have.
That is what doesn’t fit.
Things are not supposed to become normal that quickly.
Or maybe they always do.
Only now I notice.
The feeling returns.
Not as an idea.
As anticipation.
That moment just before understanding something.
Nothing happens.
But the body prepares anyway.
I have to move my neck.
I am not moving it.
Not yet.
