There is a kind of melancholy
that inhabits a woman of a certain age.
Like a cloak of kelp and arame draped across her shoulders –
Clinging and dripping,
Enfolding her in saline dampness.
Salty, cold, and wet from a lifetime of tears –
Some shed. Some withheld.
Sorrow-ridden tears of loss.
Bitter tears of betrayal.
Volcanic tears of rage.
All comingled with fleeting tears of joy.

A woman’s heart is tender –
despite the strength she must show to the world.

Melancholy creeps in like mist through a crack in the door
filling every space with a weightless veil
carrying all the pain of the world.
She barely sees its coming
until realizing it’s here.
Impenetrable.
Eternal.
It’s made a home in her.

Initially unwelcome –
something that must be expunged.
But the more it’s met with resistance
the louder its cries become.
Until the moment she accepts melancholy’s heavy wrap,
there she discovers not pain but comfort.

Melancholy is neither curse, nor depression to be shunned.
Instead, melancholy is the acknowledgment of all a woman has held on her own –
the cloak of comfort she could not give to herself and what she didn’t receive from the world.