The difference between melancholy and anxiety and depression
Is a subtle but a distinct one
Melancholy is slow, methodical, contemplative
It is a grey fog between me and the darkened abyss of the sea
It is seeing a distant ship
Blinking in the twilight one…two…three
It is the hope of someone coming in to shore
Of anything
Coming to shore
Melancholy can be loneliness
Can be boredom
And at the same time knowing
That no mundane thing
Like a TV show or an old friend
Or a band on the boardwalk
Will help shake it
Melancholy looks for something absolutely grand
And magical
And stupendous
And completely unbelievable
To take its place
Nothing else will do
Melancholy is, in fact, synonymous with the sea
And sailors
I used to be one
It is remembering
Old loves
And old pictures and old times
Is it nostalgia?
No and it can never be
Nostalgia and melancholy are cousins
But distant ones
Melancholy evaluates the depths of its own depression
It is black overcoats and sad sappy poems
That mean nothing
Like this one
Nostalgia on the other hand
Are pink ribbons
Curly haired little girls and the smell
Of old moth balls
And tinny perfume
All of the images it conjures up
Mean nothing as well
But nostalgia thinks that they
Are all real
And what is really important
In this world
Nostalgia waxes
Melancholy wanes
Melancholy makes me write
Deeply
It is a craving inside
It is root chakra
It is sacral
Melancholy can turn to desire
In a second
Melancholy observes
Its own heat
And anxiety and depression?
Those are characters
For a whole other poem altogether.
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