Tristezza

Despair is a tyrant of a lover. She rips at your flesh, your Self, as a beast would its prey. Her presence is apparent to all. There is no trickery here. Only destruction, desolation, anguish: immediate and sharp and penetrating anguish. She demolishes her victims swiftly and fatally. Disaster, disease, death— all are kin to her. They feed her, shelter her, guide her… yet she is swift, and shows mercy in this. She washes over me with the intensity of every ocean, and I do not think to struggle in her. I only embrace her, roll in her, let her take the breath from me and the strength from me and the life from me. She fills me and surrounds me so completely, so securely, and she is all I know and all I wish to know— and then she is gone, as quick as she came. And I am left to breathe again, see again, stand again, and the world and myself are cleaner, stronger, better for it. But Sadness— sweet, seductive Sadness— you slither into my heart and woo me in the dead of night. You caress my soul with greedy fingers, ensnare me in your web. You are devious and subtle, and I fall into your comforts without a thought. You whisper down to my very marrows the cooing words of lovers long forgotten. You dance across my eyes in a ballet of memories, perfect and pristine—painful. Perfectly painful. Sweet and salty to my soul, you wade over me, across me, through me and around me— slowly, sadistically. You are precise. You are methodic. You are my lover, my lullaby, my friend, and I am lost to the world, unaware that I have even wandered. You are unknown to me until I have been wrenched from your tentacles and can look upon you. Despair is a brute and a tyrant, but you, Sadness, you are as sinister as the Devil himself. You wait in the shadows and draw me to you, grasping at me under covers, convincing me of friendship, so that I am swallowed whole, left to drown in simple suffering. You rejoice in me and feed off me, until I am no more. And then you leave me, wallowing at the bottom of an empty well. Even with this knowledge, I am yours. I fall into you like I would a bed, as if I could rest my bones here, all the while just begging you to do your worst, so I can truly feel it.