It's the taste of despair, thick and cloying on your tongue, like musty wine, long corked and hidden in crumbling wine cellars. The empty feeling when your middle's hollow and your mind's not much better. When thoughts are gone, but you still can't feel free, because the absence of thought hurts in a way you can't describe, and don't dare try. Your shoulders perpetually hunch, and your eyes can't leave the cracked lines of the pavement, tracing the broken edges until they tumble to the roadway in a clatter of rough pebbles and a few hardy weeds.
It's the brush of grief like the funereal robes that swish against your bare ankles, heavy black fabric damp against your skin with the force of your own, unconscious tears. When the weather's as grey and stormy as your mind, as chaotic as the flurry of your thoughts, when your soul aches to be with the casket they slowly lower into the ground. You toss a handful of dirt in, and the granules cling to your skin like a lover's caress.
It's the storm of loneliness that grows and aches inside you, that fills every inch of your skin. You drift through your days and feel less than a ghost, passersby's eyes drifting through you like you don't even exist. Your fireplace grows dusty with no green flames to flicker at the burnt-black stones, and the wand you keep in your back pocket burns against your flesh with cold.
It's the bright, crimson flash of misery and jealousy that gnaws at your throat and flares in your stomach when you see him with another. His hands roam over her bare shoulders the way he used to press kisses to your neck, and you can't swallow anymore as you watch his head dip and his lips claim hers. It's not fair, but nothing ever is, and you try to accustom yourself to the cold, empty bed at night and the way your table has only one place setting now.
It's the flash of ragged black robes swirling in the backyard, the crumbling fingers that stretch from beneath the tattered, worn edges. It's the cold that creeps up on you, the sadness that overwhelms you. Your happy thoughts disappear, empty themselves into the howling void that approaches. When it lowers its hood and its lips press against yours, the release feels like a benediction.
