"Melancholy"

October 11, 2018

Melancholy seeps into your room in the middle of the night, crawling in the crack under your door. It oozes out of the floorboards and ceiling, making its way between your ribs and taking up residence in your chest. This unwelcome, sorrowful pressure pressing up against your body, keeping you hostage in your bed.

Melancholy is the tired, worn out grey sweater wadded up in your floor. It is cold and hard, like stone walls keeping you locked in a maze. You run, and try to escape, but there is no exit in sight. It is the dirty dishes, sitting stacked in your sink, because you are too drained to wash them.

Melancholy is the color of the bags that live under your eyes, a faded purple-grey that never quite goes away. It is the color of mascara, staining skin in little creeks of tears. It is the exact color of the clouds between a strike of lightning and a crack of thunder. It is the blues and greens and purples of veins under paper-thin, paper-pale skin.