noun; Russian; roughly translates to “sadness”
"No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.” – Vladimir Nabokov
On days where the sunrise feels like a knife wound
I embrace the darkness curling from the shadowy corners of my mind
coiling around my heart
becoming a serpent’s chokehold around my desire to live
On the nights where the moonlight feels like sea water against open, bleeding wounds
I hold my opened veins over the running water and watch it churn
red, red, redder
so there’s proof the world stole it, kept it, swallowed it
Not every day is like this
There are days where I breathe and there’s no pang in my chest
like an arrow through my heart
Cupid can’t always be a deadeye
And there are moments
stolen heartbeats
when all I am is a whisper away from splitting at the seams
Forget the consuming, terrible sense of coming undone in pieces
Sometimes the unraveling is as simple as exhaling
and becoming ash
Imagine the pain volcanoes must carry to always be on the brink of breaking
What is this pain, this unendurable agony?
Why does the whole world carry it
the way Atlas carries the heavens?
Like we’re saving the world from crushing
but we’re being crushed anyway
I know pain like the back of my hand
I’ve held it close to my chest since I can remember
The embrace of sadness is dearest to me
and I can feel its hooks in my skeleton
claiming its pound of flesh through my heart
Misery is hungry, devouring—
a black hole stealing all the light
Yes, I embrace the darkness
It’s the only way I know how to survive
If I lean into the pain
it’s an embrace and not a death grip
Isn’t it?
Isn’t it?
Isn’t it?
At least it is familiar
At least I know the steps in this dance
At least I know I will always have it