Cold Tea and Melancholy

It’s getting late, the sunlight is fading. The shadows on the wall keep getting longer, stretching their souls to fit into this small room. The ceiling begins to dance in painted whites as I lie here. A cup of tea sits on the floor next to my elbow. It’s cold now. I’m broken. Not in the physical sense. It’s all in my chest. Like my heart has decided that there is no other choice but to break, continually. My lungs have turned to lead and I lie here, staring at the ceiling, in the naive hope that you will speak to me from it.


There was a time that we spoke, heart to heart. It was easy. You would know what I was about to say, even before I vocalised it. Now I’m not so sure. Moonlight Sonata is playing. My whole being groans in unformed words and desires. No, not desires. The unspeakable feeling you get, the wordless cry from within your soul. That’s what it is.

Some things are just too beautiful to handle. Like sunlight on a clear day. It’s almost too good. When I walk I get overwhelmed at the sky, at the air I breathe, at the little spores that fly off dandelions when I make a childish wish. So I lie here, on the floor in the middle of my living room, weighted down by everything I can’t seem to handle.

Sometimes I wish I was born blind, and in a moment was given sight. Just to see the reality of things, without the blinding veil of familiarity. To see faces I have long since taken for granted, to understand things as they are, not as I understand them to be.

I think about what life would be like without mystery. Without intrigue. Without the subtle chord progression into a minor key. Without that wrenching moment when you say goodbye to someone for what could be the last time, and you miss that last glimpse of their face. Without melancholy to soften the starkness of reality. Without the soft cloud of dreams that falls on each head, as pillowed in their own sub-conscious they achieve all that was once impossibility.

The keys strike chords in my heart, as if each emotion was a note, dimmed through my body, yet echoing around the cavity that once seemed so full. A dark place. You know, I’m often scared of these places. I think because I was once trapped there, with what seemed no way out. Faced with the possibility of history repeating itself, I flee from the dark, I choose to stay in the shallows.