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Melancholy
A tiny memory about the first word that ever felt like mine
“She looks so melancholy,” the lady said — and I did. Watching raindrops trickle down a dirty café window, tracing their track marks with my finger as though they might lead me somewhere new.
Five years old and wide‑eyed, I rolled the word around my mouth and flicked it off the end of my tongue. “Mel‑an‑cho‑ly.” I liked it. I didn’t know what it meant, but I liked how it tasted — how it felt full in my mouth before popping like strawberry‑flavoured gum.
“Melancholy.” It enchanted me, and I felt proud that I was that delicious‑sounding word.
Fifteen years old, lying on a broken bunk in my brother’s room, I leafed through an old dictionary. I felt as tired and weary as the yellowed pages before me.
“Melancholy — noun — a feeling of pensive sadness, typically with no obvious cause.”
I stared at the ceiling and tried rolling the word around my mouth once more — the familiar pop no longer strawberry‑tasting gum but a shotgun, cold and hard.
I wasn’t sure I liked the word anymore, yet somehow, I still knew it belonged to me.
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