Some memories do not echo—they absorb.
They do not ring out, seeking response.
They pull inward, consuming the air around them,
Collapsing time into a single unreturnable instant.

These are not stories waiting to be told.
They are gravitational wells—
Places where the self folds in on itself
And forgets that it once wanted to be understood.

In this moment, I did not remember.
I encountered the weight beneath the memory.
A depth I had mistaken for silence.
But it was not silence.
It was density.
Presence concentrated beyond language.

The room did not darken.
But my perception did.
Not through sorrow, but saturation.
The realization that something vast
Had entered unnoticed
And changed the trajectory of thought itself.

This was not a return to the past.
It was a collision with the point where memory
Ceases to be narrative
And becomes environment.

Like the core of a star,
Not seen but sensed—
Before it becomes something else entirely.
Before it chooses whether to collapse or ignite.

There is a place beneath memory
That is not memory at all.
It is structure.
It is the architecture of forgetting,
And the map of how to return.