The smallest bones of your body

There are days when the sun never shows its face, when the clouds cover the entire sky and the world remains grey all day long. Days when the rain beats against the windowpanes uninterrupted, when the gutter gushes with the quick, clear blood of a thousand, a million raindrops, those violent squalling reminders that the world can’t be sunny everyday, that nothing can be as perfect as you want it.

These are the days of unsettling possibilities, of dreams unmet and futures unknown. They’re the days when the term “daylight” is a misnomer, and the grey of the world never lifts to reveal that soft white glow, but stalks the bare trees and the yellowed blades of grass, spreads its cold fingers over the shiny hues of the cars until its grip latches on even to the air, and it hangs there, foggy and still, outside your windows.

And as you sit in your chair, contemplating those unsettling possibilities, those dreams unmet and those futures unknown, for one brief moment you see the hope of yesterday’s brightness disappear. The foggy stillness of the world outside the glass seeps through those panes, and becomes something more insidious and more tangible all at once. It wraps around the smallest bones of your body and taps, taps, taps to remind you that it’s there.

It’s there. And you remember it from last time.

You kept those windows closed and locked—it’s January, after all, and it’s cold outside—but sometimes it’s just no match for the weight of the world: that constant punishment inflicted on the hopeful… those foolish enough to believe that a little bit of sanity—nay, even a little morsel of happiness—can ever be had for anything less than the forfeiture of life itself.