On murdering, trampling, and melancholy

One time it was very late at night, and I was parked outside a dark cafe, sweaty in the backseat of a vehicle that included 3 of us but should have included only 2. The 2 people in front were in that early phase of intimacy where they imagine it's safer to have a third party, a buffer really, with them to both ease awkwardness and to heighten the awareness of their own growing chemistry. 

They were bonding over the fact that they had their deep melancholy in common. Others, like me they pointed out, had the gift of cheerfulness, of being happy. 

It offended me greatly. Wasn't I melancholy? Wasn't my sadness as real and as palpable as theirs? I forget the details, but I know I huffed and puffed and said I was sad frequently, to which they balked and laughed and felt ever closer to one another. 

It left me with something to prove, and I chewed a lot of melancholy fat over the next few years. 

But I think what they saw was my easy access to joy. And who imagines that joy has to be experienced over and over again like melancholy? Who imagines that it's not a constant flavor, that it has to be consumed again to be tasted again? Who imagines that joy is as fleeting as it is pervasive?

Well, it's always been there, this joy. And proving my melancholy got lost along the way, not that long ago maybe. 

It's still there too, thank gracious -- how disappointing to lose an entire emotion otherwise! 

But the thing I'm holding close to today, the thing I'm tasting, the thing I'm scribbling right so here so I don't forget it is that 

I Feel Good.

* * *

I bought a mirror for our new apartment. 

A full, singular mirror for looking at my full, singular self.

The package also made me feel good:

 

See?

* * *

And here I want to show y'all where I am right now. 

Because I'm a little bit in love with a lot of things, and I'm a lot in love with something far greater than me.

(I initially wrote, here I want to give away where I am right now.

See how the language of hiding and of pleasing is so easily accessible on the tongue in this place? 

But also see how I caught it and I shared it because you have it too?)

Attempting delicious murder with my favorite shimmering black bird. 

Together we are attempting a delicious meta-murder.