The Melancholist I (2014)

I am soon going to stop functioning in this world. At least functioning in the way one is expected to function. I can feel the madness approaching, some days are so filled with it that I can hardly speak to anyone. I have become a construct of thoughts and ideas, fantasies and creations that are beyond any realm of reality. I fear because I do not know how I am to live life like this. Where will I get food, where will I find shelter? But I have tried and I have given up, to stop it from being the centre of my life. Sweet melancholia.

I have spent countless, sleepless nights because my brain would not be still. So what am I to do but to give up and accept it? As if I had been given a choice – you make me laugh. If in the past I had been given a choice I would have chosen a different path but now I have embraced it to be me, to be mine. 

What I am to do with it I dare not to ask. I shall spend entire days in bed because I do not see the point of stepping out of my house. Other days I shall spend reading novels and poetry. Other days I shall spend noting down every thought I have. Other days I shall write poems and short stories. Other days I shall discover the beauty of numbers. It is all I can do and it is all I am meant to be. 

Would you ask a sportsman to cook you a meal? Would you ask a dancer to teach history to the young? Then why do you ask me to do what I cannot? I know nothing of offices and business and trade. Give me a thought and I shall debate it, give me a word and I shall create from it, give me a sheet of paper and I shall write. Don’t ask me to let go of it in favour of something that would make my life not worth living. Have I not embraced this sadness for a reason? If it loses its meaning, why live at all?

No, no, I shall build upon what I have been given. In many directions I will aim and you will sit and wonder and shake your head. You won’t understand which is why you are there – and I am here, spending days in depression but loving it because it is all that I’ve got. And I will love the world and my life and my being, how it is all drawn by melancholy, and I shall spend my life thinking and slowly sinking, deep into sweet, sweet melancholy. 

Final Nostalgia (2014)

She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. The window was wide open and a cool breeze played with the long, white curtains while the morning sun had turned the entire room golden, as if it had been dipped in honey.

She could hear him breath next to her. She timidly peered over to him. He looked peaceful, innocent. His skin glistened and his lips were perfectly drawn. His nose was straight, his eyebrows dark. She did not remember the colour of his eyes – brown, I think. His hair was tousled and perfectly framed his face. 

She slowly turned to her side and watched his chest rise, then sink with every breath. 

‘Who are you?’, she whispered. 

She slowly moved out of bed and slipped into a pair of white slippers that had been waiting for her small, soft feet. She glanced at herself in the large mirror across the room. She was wearing a white, transparent nightgown. Her long, brown hair covered her breasts. 

She felt a feeling of warmth run through her heart, followed by a smile, another look at him. 

She stepped out on the balcony and glanced across the many roofs of the city. She took a deep breath. The air was sweet, filled with the scent of flowers and the scent of lovers making love. 

Love, yes, this was love. 

She looked at him through the window. He smiled in his sleep. How beautiful he was. She almost began to sing, then to dance. Then she laughed, loudly and full-heartedly. 

She went back inside and walked around the bed. She looked at him from every side, each angle. She went closer and placed her finger on his forehead. Then she slowly moved it down his nose, over his lips, down his chin and neck, to his chest. With her petite hands she lifted the pastel-blue blanket and carefully pulled it from his body to expose his stomach, his hips, his legs, and his feet to the light of the sun. Then she continued to move her finger down his body until she reached the toes on his right foot. He moved slightly. She giggled and blushed.

He started to move more. He was going to wake up. She felt nervous, anxious, joyful and overwhelmed. 

‘I love you’, she whispered. 

She sat down on the window sill and observed his every move with a childlike curiosity and naive excitement. 

He sat up in bed and looked at her. He smiled; she turned red and sheepishly looked out of the window at the empty street. A man on a bicycle was passing by with flowers under his arm. 

He got up and walked over. She could feel his breath on her neck and shoulder. His hand slowly moved down her arm, then his hand embraced hers. They stood for a while and watched the street come to life. Then they looked at each other and smiled. Both of them shy, happy and cut off from the world, within these four walls that she had created. Beyond which there was nothing.

‘Only you and me’, he said.

They danced and with every step their hearts seemed to turn younger and their passion burn brighter. 

‘We have lost her.’

They danced. They danced forever and smiled at each other. Everything was bright and gold and everything was good.