Sadness (Written Winter 2003)

There are an infinite number of ways to be sad and a million more ways to love.

There’s sadness for those you love or loved and weren’t loved by in return. That’s the most sold sadness. Always the most expensive, never goes on sale, but almost everyone is a consumer of it once in their lives. Sometimes tears are included, but only while supplies last.

It isn’t really what causes it so much as what it does to you. It takes brushing your teeth and makes it calculus.

My lover is gone, but love has stayed. No more is it housed by a body. No longer does it have flesh to absorb it. It hangs in the air. I can’t take it back and he peeled it from himself like wet clothing. Just stripped it away and left it on the floor. Eventually it will dry, but it will remain on the floor to be picked up by someone else, for in the drying process it has changed shape and will no longer fit him anymore.

It isn’t really what causes it so much as what it does to you.