Resting Pugilist. What are you waiting for?

  

Púgil en Reposo (Palacio Maximo, Roma).

I stepped into the hall of the Palatium Maximum with a heavy heart. There, leaning against the cold marble, I saw you: sweat and ash mixed on your skin, your face worn from a brutal battle. Your half-open eyelids revealed the uncertainty consuming you from within, while thin trails of blood trickled from the lacerations on your arms and the fresh fractures in your brow, cheekbone, and nose. Your ears — swollen and misshapen with that telltale “cauliflower” injury — spoke of old blows and past victories, just like your tensed muscles and the caestus clenched tightly in your hands, ready to return to the fight.

I approached quietly, listening to your deep, measured breathing. For a moment, everything seemed to stop: the grandeur of the Roman setting, the echoes of history, and you — an unshaken warrior in the face of adversity. And I asked you, almost in a whisper:

What are you waiting for?

Has your defeat already come, or is this the prelude to victories yet to be carved?

That silence, heavy with questions, echoed in me like a personal challenge. Because there are moments when rest does not mean surrender, but the prelude to a stronger rebirth. And I knew that even if your body pleads for a truce, your warrior spirit has only just begun to write its legend.