Alone in the darkness. It enters when no one invites it. Slowly, it runs its fingers across the place, touching everything without leaving a trace. It takes its time. There is no reason to hurry. It knows I will eventually notice it.
There is a certain romance in melancholy and darkness.
Melancholy does not arrive like pain. It settles gently. It sits beside you without saying a word. It knows the weight of silence and the comfort of a room where no one expects you to pretend.
Sometimes, melancholy feels almost beautiful.
It lives in old photographs, in songs we can no longer listen to, in places we will never return to. It hides inside memories that hurt precisely because they were once happy. It is the feeling of missing something without knowing exactly what it is.
Perhaps that is why I let it stay.
Modestly, it tears apart the chains that hold everything together as it walks across the face of the earth. It moves between cracks, through forgotten rooms and empty streets. No one sees it arrive.
But everyone feels it.
Looking through the shadows, a creature lurks.
It watches.
All thoughts seem lifeless. They drift somewhere between memory and fear, unable to find a place to rest. Obsessed with change, running from the truth, darkness slips in quietly.
It does not knock. It does not ask permission.
Crimson red fills the room. Everything begins to spin, slowly at first, then faster.
The air becomes heavy. Every breath feels smaller than the one before. The walls shrink rapidly. Slowly, they do not change. They simply seem closer. It never stops. It is hard to breathe. Darkness slips in quietly.
Time has taught me that, in misfortune, we can hide behind masks. We learn how to smile at the right moment, how to answer that everything is fine, how to walk through crowded rooms without letting anyone see what is happening inside.
We become experts at distraction. We learn to bury pain beneath ordinary things. Without a doubt, the smile is fake.
And as darkness quietly slips in, I cannot let the misery I hide escape again. I hold it inside with both hands, as if pain were something that could be contained. I press it down, deeper and deeper, beneath memories, beneath silence, beneath the smile I have learned to wear so well.
I tell myself that I am stronger than it. That I can keep it hidden. That no one needs to know.
But the more I try to silence it, the louder it becomes. It moves through me like a quiet storm, searching for a crack, a weakness, a moment when I am too tired to keep pretending.
Sometimes, I think I have forgotten how to feel anything else.
But pain has its own language. It speaks through restless nights and trembling hands. Through the heaviness in my chest and the tears that arrive without warning. It speaks in memories I thought I had buried and in the silence that becomes unbearable when there is no one around.
I try to ignore it. I try to give it another name. Melancholy. Loneliness. Exhaustion. Anything but what it really is. But pain does not disappear because we refuse to name it. It always finds a way out. A tear. A breath. A broken thought.
Silence that lasts too long. Darkness slips in quietly, alone.
It settles beside me as though it has always belonged there. It does not need to touch me. Its presence is enough. I can feel it filling the empty spaces around me, slowly taking away the little light I have left. In the darkness, I sit down. I stop fighting. I stop pretending. And I fall apart.
Piece by piece, everything I have held together begins to collapse. The mask falls first. Then the smile. Then the carefully constructed version of myself that I have shown to the world.
There is no one left to convince. Only me. Only the darkness.
And everything I have spent so long trying not to feel.
For a moment, there is nothing left to pretend. No mask. No smile. No carefully chosen words. Only the sound of my own breathing and the silence that follows it.
My tears are made of blood.
And if I allow my pain to stop, I will stop living. I can hear in my heart what remains of it. Something small is still beating beneath everything else, desperately trying to remind me that I am here.
I know the blood is coming soon. My soul is crying. I am losing control. I feel the darkness slowly dragging me down. It begins at my feet. Then my knees. Then my chest.
I try to hold on to something, but there is nothing there. The darkness has already reached the places where I used to feel safe. It wraps itself around my thoughts and whispers that there is nowhere else to go.
The darkness will not let me go. It takes hold of me, and I know that I will not be able to leave. It pulls me under. Down. Down.
And I am beneath it. For a moment, there is no sound. No light. No escape. Only darkness. And somewhere beneath all of it, I close my eyes and listen to the last fragile beat of my heart.
