May 3rd, 2018
Melancholy (noun): A feeling of pensive sadness, typically with no obvious cause. (adjective): Having a feeling of melancholy, sad and pensive.
She sleepily picked herself up off of the bed, gracefully tugging her phone off the charger, then headed towards the bathroom where she ran her skin care routine and brushed her teeth and hair. Glancing out her bathroom window, she saw the sun resting where she usually could this time of year. She looked away, but she would be seeing purple whenever she blinked for the next five minutes. She meticulously plucked a sweater from a hanger in her closet and poked her head through the neck hole, halfway out the door to her kitchen. She made sure to plant a kiss on Ruffles’ forehead on her way. One omelette later and her boots were out the door, car keys in hand. She fell into a trance over the car ride.
She woke up from a stream of sunlight peeking through the window, seeping into her dark bedroom via the broken flap of the blinds. She rolled over, checked the time; 8:76 am. If only such a time existed.
At the office, she chatted happily with her peers as she absent-mindedly typed emails and filled out paperwork. She laughed loudly and drank coffee freely; occasionally thinking of her dog at home, who would be eating from his automatic feeder just about now. She thought that she might want to do the same. Come 12:61, she headed to that one place nearby for a cozy lunch with her closest friend.
Upon entry, she was unnerved by the large crowd of people gathered in the cramped restaurant. Her friend gave her a light smile and pointed to a corner table for them to occupy. They sat. Her friend simply stated, “This will be fun. The more people there are, the less likely anyone will be looking at us.” She felt a deep feeling in her chest. She loved this person. She would know her for however long forever lasted.
They returned to work less enthusiastically than they had in the morning. She and her friend parted as they sat at their respective desks and once again began typing away. She nodded and smiled lazily as the guy who sat at the desk beside her shamelessly hit on her for the third time this week. What he didn’t know was that she was really making a mental note for herself to refill Ruffles’ heart medication tomorrow.
She groped the wall in an attempt to find the light switch back into her apartment, not quite remembering the drive back here. Before she could find it, she heard Ruffles snort in front of her, followed by his small tongue licking at her ankle and his white, springy, soft fur pressing against her leg. She picked him up and embraced him once she had finally found the light.
The kettle squeaked at her from the kitchen, forcing her to roll off of her bed to calm it. She steeped green tea and poured some into her old white teacup; the one with two small chips on its rim. She threw a spoon into her mouth to bring back into her bed with her for stirring.
Settling down in the covers, she popped the spoon into her cup and began to stir. She softly recited, a line per-stir rotation, “One for sorrow, two for joy …” The spoon clinked against the glass. “Eight for a kiss, nine for a wish–” she paused,“–and ten for a bird you must not miss,” she finished, plopping a spoonful of tea into her mouth. She would finish her tea and read for ten minutes before drifting off with the book open against her chest.
As she fell asleep, somewhere in the back of her mind, she felt something–a feeling that got more and more overwhelming the closer she got to sleep. The feeling came every night, posing two lingering questions she would never know the answer to:
Is this really all there is? Would that be a bad thing?
She dreamt of nothing and thought that was oddly fitting.
The day was May 3rd, 2018, a day like every other and different from any other that had come before.
Inlandia: A Literary Journey 