When your mood feels like a color and the color is black.

Not the elegant black of a little dress or the bold black of fresh ink. This is the black that swallows the edges of reality. The black that turns the loud ticking clock into a distant hum. The black that hangs like thick dusty curtains over day.

It settles over ordinary things. A cup left on the counter you didn’t put away. A message,or ten, waiting for an answer. Laundry that grew into a skyscraper somehow. None of it is big on its own, except maybe the skyscraper, but under this color everything casts a shadow.

I am just a shape of life covered in ash.

I can’t really name what hurts. I just know that color is hiding. And here’s the thing about black. It likes to hoard all the colors under its coat. If you sit with it and keep it company long enough it will share them with you.