My friend asked me today what melancholy means.

I didn’t know how to respond without her getting upset that I was sad, again.
She guessed boredom. Well, a kind of.
A nostalgic boredom, longing for a when or a why. Then I reconsidered, and I told her, “I feel like Pittsburgh”. Like the snow outside when the heater was too high inside, or a cup of cocoa at cafe Rachel. Like texting a friend and writing for the paper while wearing lined leggings under my pajamas. Like being lost in love, buffeted by the storms that held me.

We sailed under spotty streetlights. Cutting through cold air, listening to an empty radio station. I thought again, and then, agreed that melancholy was my nothing. Because somehow, all the little things took my everything.

But that isn’t true either. Is it.