I stepped back. A single step, barely marked, barely willed — but enough. An instinctive, thoughtless step, coming from far away, from those zones of the body that remember before the soul, that refuse even before thought can formulate refusal. It wasn't fear. Nothing sharp, nothing panicked, nothing theatrical. No. It was something else.
It was the exhaustion of an animal that no longer wants to growl, bite, or flee. It was that minimal gesture of a being hunted for too long, who no longer believes in escape but still can't help backing away when the world comes too close.
That step, I hadn't decided it. It had been torn from me by an ancient reflex, an automatic refusal — not of the thing before me, but of everything. Of embrace. Of softness. Of echo.
I wasn't stepping back from a threat. I was stepping back from the idea that I could still be loved.
