I turn my collar up at the wind that blows against my neck.  It is a cool breeze, yet not cold, and its dampness speaks of coming rain.  Chills rack my body as the moving air brushes against fevered skin.  I am hot to the touch, yet inside where no one feels but me, I am bathed in icy cold.  It haunts me, vexes me at every turn.

A cloudy sky welcomes me to a new day.  Nothing inside me wants it.  Send it back, I demand inside my own head.  No one listens.  This misery is mine alone, a burden I must carry ’til it passes.  Even the clouds rushing by in journeys to nowhere offer little comfort.  Their own business seems more important, I am sure, yet I wish for them to pause long enough so that I might feel they have not completely forsaken me.  But they do no such thing.

The roughness of my own voice frightens me sometimes.  I hear it and wonder who else is in the house.  I think, I’m not alone, but I am.  Despite its alien sound in my ears, there is a part of that sickly song I recognize.  It is the sound of my weeping held silent, the whisper of defeat refused for fear it could be right, the voiceless call of sorrow’s ill.

Lest my weakness overtake me, I retreat through the same door I used to escape.  Clumsy hands of warm air paw at me before I am fully inside.  They scrape and scratch my skin, and I hate them.  There is no balance betwixt the hot and cold; no territory wherein I may stand that would grant me a moment’s peace.  The outside world incarcerates my bones within a cell of blowing despair; the inside world restrains me with fetters of lonely distress.  One is too hot and the other too cold.  Isn’t there a place where I won’t feel like this?

Birds sing excitedly in the tree right outside the doors.  I wish to be with them, to share in the bounty of their jubilation, to witness first-hand, even if only briefly, the vigor and vitality their warbling shouts to the firmament.  While I stand at the window setting my eyes upon them, the coolness of the glass pierces me and I am forced to step away so that I might regain some comfort—what little there is to be found.  But before I can remove myself from them, the glass rattles as it is caressed by the strengthening wind.

My body shudders at the thought of the two worlds which hold me captive.  The unwell pall blanketing me bellows gloom.  There is no escape, at least not yet.  This agony I must endure.