Melancholy is winter’s cloak, woven of cold-spun cloud. For it descends as a foggy despondency, lethargic, grim. It smites my heat. It deadens my features. It renders my once bonny lips a doleful frown. I writhe, testing its limits, seeking its boundary as an emotional pioneer. It has an elastic quality, a stickiness too; then it becomes quicksand and salty too. Yet to find the better parts of my heart I must win. Surely as clouds rain themselves out of existence, this sadness will fall one drop at a time. Perhaps. Perhaps. Better to be the beggar of hope than the monarch of morose lament.
The pulse of her tender wings, the butterfly, and my heart-beat were as one - solemn and lamenting. Each of us were near-silent. Each of us were near-frozen. Each of us were alone and together in the humid moment; for the air was bloated, heavy and close. It was a gloomy saturation. Lady light, it seemed, had forgotten her warm-lit songs and instead found the skin in cool bluish rays. Even the floral scent was sunken, though I cannot fathom how. In all of this, as companion and barometer, sat the butterfly. What I felt, she felt it too, those paper-wings cannot lie.
When I'm melancholy I'm okay with the emotion. I take it as my body and brain saying that I need rest and a chance to feel joy doing whatever I find fun. It is tiredness and when we are tired, rest is wise - being good to yourself is good.
The melancholy gives away the exit even as it pretends it isn't there, softly calling me away from all that brings real joy. It tells me that I can't ask for a hug, reach for the sunshine, or take a walk among the soft hymn of trees, hearing how the wind plays in the leaves.
This melancholy is a cloak I can't simply let fall to the floor, and though I hold it so tight I can't find the warmth I need, yet it clings. It is the anchor to my feet, the reason I can't find the surface or the sunshine, that feeling of soft joy that lives in memories that can't rise within.
My emotions are more stable than most because they sit either side of neutrality. Most of the time I feel happiness as being "content" and sadness as "melancholy." Because they aren't extremes I recover from the lower states quicker. I am able to carry on more easily. Those that aim for higher happiness often suffer lower lows, or at least it appears that way from my point of view. Anyway, that's me.