Elegiac Dissonance

Happiness........

it is fleeting and elusive,

it keeps slipping out the side door

while we are looking straight ahead.

This may seem mournful, plaintive -

an expression of sorrow

for something lost and nostalgic

a longing for the past

It begins softly, the way one remembers

a warm chair still holding the shape of a body,

a laugh that lingers in the air

long after the mouth has closed.

Happiness was always like that~~

a visitor who never stayed the night,

but left the scent of citrus on the windowsill.

We mourn it the way we mourn a season:

with the quiet ache of realizing

the light has changed.

That the sun now falls at a different angle.

That the shadows have grown longer...

And yet~~

in every lamenting knell there is a pulse,

a stubborn ember refusing to go out.

Happiness is not gone; it keens

it is only elsewhere,

gathering itself,

learning a new shape.

So we speak of it with reverence,

as one speaks of a friend who travels often:

never here long,

never truly lost.

We set a place for it at the table,

even on the days it does not come.

Because an elegy is not an ending.

It is a promise whispered to the air:

that when happiness returns~~

and it will~~

we will recognize it,

even if it arrives wearing a different face.