Why is it easier to write darker pieces than happy ones? Is it just me, or is it like acting – easier to play the high emotions than the everyday?

Twilight forever, shadows stretch and creep across the landscape, twisted fingers scuttling along eternity, blotting out the brightness. Living forever in a half-light, without the hope of the viscous, cloying fog lifting, or the thunderous clouds parting to allow a chink of light.

The girl sits hunched, forever. Never able to stand tall, to stretch towards the sun, like a frail daisy in the shadow of a dandelion, starved of the light, she withers and is stunted.

Day, after day, after day, after day, forever, the daytime grows greyer. All pleasure is crumpled and scorched, burnt away to ash, stinging her eyes and coating her skin in destroyed hopes, suffocating and heavy, a dull layer of despair that grows thicker by the day, the hour, the minute.

Day, after day, after day, after day, she wishes for the ash to sink inside, wrap around her heart and stop it from beating, from feeling, from living. If it shrivels and blackens, would she be free? Would she be able to walk in the day, go through the motions, be protected from harm? Is it better to feel and feel broken, or to be feeling-less and functional?

A film covers her eyes, greying the landscape. Tears will clear it for a moment, but they just leave sticky rivulets down the cheeks, and under the chin, an unending, polluted waterfall washing the poison across her skin.