Esther Racah Writer & Literary Blogger

Tag: melancholy

  • The Well Of Phantom Wishes

    The Well Of Phantom Wishes

    The well of phantom wishes
    Was the well of my disappointments
    Of all those illusions
    That had deceived me
    In a malevolent way
    With their allure
    And their way of
    Misleading me
    With fake smiles and phrases
    Like lines from a script
    But in truth, it was all fake
    Every single thing
    And every
    One I had known, glimpsed
    Were nothing but
    Delusional
    Realities
    Beneath
    A deception
    A cruel deception
    That dragged me down
    Into that well
    So deep and so dark
    That I could not glimpse
    Any
    Vision
    Any hope

    My tears were of no use, nor was my despair.
    My broken heart had shattered, like a crystal or stone ornament,
    its translucence and splendour reduced to dust and fragments,
    soiled by the cold ground, soaked in mud and decadent filth.
    That beauty I had once cherished within me
    had turned into a twisted transfiguration of my own reflection.

    What remained in my hands was dust and decay.
    I closed my eyes, and silence shrouded my thoughts,
    making them vague and fleeting like dark shadows
    that moved around me but I could never reach.

    One of my silver bracelets that shone like stars broke,
    and through its fractures, you could read my life’s illness,
    My malaise of living, my melancholic soul
    that had no peace and could find no place of salvation,
    lost among the clouds that darkened my mind.

    The pain was raining down on me like one of those cold and biting winter rains.
    Almost as if it wanted to scratch me and leave marks like painful and distressing memories that followed me wherever I went at any time.

    My sighs and sobs were mystified by that funeral silence of the endless night which had neither beginning nor end, and which wrapped me in its dark and misty cloak, almost to intoxicate me with its gloom and make me forget my infinite pain.
    Lisa

  • Buried Memories

    Buried Memories

    Buried memories unearthed in my subconscious during my journeys of lost and unknown dreams in places and times unknown to me and of which I perceived only fragments of memory that I kept to myself.

    Joys and sorrows dwelled in my heart, which knew no peace, and was constantly pierced by anguish and anxiety, as well as sorrowful memories full of resentment and regrets.

    I woke up with the anguish of memories and the worries that clung to me like invisible chains.
    And the clock struck ten past ten,
    It seemed as though the bells had rung,
    And the stillness around me revealed
    How my anxieties and anguish were fleeting realities,
    And though heavy, they could vanish into nothingness.

    The sadness—or melancholy, as it may be defined by words—was like an endless abyss within my heart, and it was that very sadness which had carved deep wounds that continued to bleed and had never healed. Time, in the end, had not fulfilled its duty, and the oblivion of my pains and sufferings had not completed its task.

    Lying in an inhospitable and unknown cemetery, I found myself in my solitude and in the most deafening silence.
    The crimson mist hovered around like a spirit both present and dominant within that mysterious and twilight aura.

    I felt how anguish mingled with my fears, as if, despite having lost everything, I would… I had doubted whether to descend further into the abyss of despair.

    And as the wind enveloped me in its coldness and its silent softness, so, in the very same moment, it was as though I had found myself in a new reality, a new realm, unfamiliar to me.

    If I were to find myself in the realm of lost, recovered, buried and unearthed memories, I would not know it—nor shall I ever—for my visions were like hallucinations, as if all of it were born of my own fantasies, my nocturnal nightmares, and my waking daydreams.
    Lisa

  • Beneath The Ocean Vault

    Beneath The Ocean Vault

    Beneath the ocean vault, there was a secret place
    where the hidden truths and the most recondite secrets had been buried.
    Among ruins covered by coral and algae
    and a rather unsettling expanse of swirling water.
    It was there that the crypt under the ocean lay,
    as if the sea had been its roof and also its home.
    Mine was a simple vision,
    it may be that I was dreaming,
    it may be that I was having these hallucinations.
    I only know that it was not the fruit of a conscious and calculated imagination.
    It seemed that I had abandoned myself
    to the sound of the stormy waves on an autumn evening.
    When the faint light of the sky merged with the water of the ocean
    until merged as one unity.

    I closed my eyes and I abandoned myself to my imaginative madness,
    And I saw with even more clarity that marvellous and fantastical landscape
    which did not belong to me,
    But which in some way symbolised something of my past or of my future,
    because I, in the end, lived in the past and the future.
    My present was in oblivion.

    Beneath the ocean vault, my dreams had ceased to whisper visions and desires. In their place remained nightmares that drew their fantasies from bitter disappointments and atrocious memories. And it was in this labyrinth of water and darkness that I found myself entwined, clutched as if unbound by invisible chains.

    I found myself in an oceanic crypt where the sea creatures had turned into ghosts, hunting me like prey and a victim of their tortures and torments. My invocation to the cruel fate of a possible change, where I might have grasped a flower of hope, was to no avail. In the endless and vast infinite.
    Lisa

  • Infinite Stairs Of Waiting

    Infinite Stairs Of Waiting

    Infinite stairs of waiting
    The more I wait, the more I feel trapped in the dungeon of anguish.
    The more I climbed the stairs, the more I tried to ascend,
    the more it seemed I was descending downward with no result.
    All of this made me frustrated
    because I could not reach my goal.

    In my stillness I found myself,
    But at the same time, I lost a part of me.
    It was as if everything I had learned
    I had lost and forgotten,
    and everything I did not know
    I had unconsciously acquired.

    Confused and bewildered in a place of nowhere
    I strived to believe in my dreams but all I could do was fall from the stairs

    It was a game of illusion and reality.
    I had ceased to discern what seemed deception from what was truth.
    Both had blended together.
    It was as if there were no longer any meaning,
    and no longer any need to possess the domain of wisdom and knowledge.
    Everything had shattered into the abyss of ignorance and madness.

    And I proceeded on a thin thread between creation and destruction.
    My perplexities and hopes echoed as if they resounded through enigmatic structures, without meaning and expectations.

    Spirits that I could not discern, that I could not distinguish, whispered to me encouragements to pursue. But every time I fell and plunged into another flight of stairs, they laughed, almost as if to make fun of me — and to mock my inexperience and incompetence.

    In solitude I found myself lost, and there I languished like a creature from other worlds, indulging in my languor and melancholy; I was certain that I was towards myself and my image no longer had reflections in any mirror. The staircase was truly infinite like a steep ascent without end; there was neither a beginning nor an end, everything was an infinite perpetuity of distress and anguish.

    Infinite stairs of waiting were my dwelling for eternity, and there I had to… to… I didn’t know anymore.
    Lisa

  • The Cemetery Of Fairies

    The Cemetery Of Fairies

    The cemetery of fairies
    lay before me
    In all its solemnity
    and hidden silence,
    where I sought refuge
    In my usual nocturnal flight
    from the nightmares—
    those sovereigns
    of my heart.

    Lay before me
    In all its solemnity
    and hidden silence,
    where I sought refuge
    In my usual nocturnal flight
    from the nightmares—
    those sovereigns
    of my heart.

    Star dust was falling over me
    like a midnight rain
    In a winter storm,
    cold and glimmering,
    silent as a magic spell,
    settling upon my hair
    like an ethereal veil
    woven from arcane secrets.

    A shroud of solitude wrapped around me
    like a protective barrier,
    rendering me invisible to others—
    And yet, at the same time,
    It made me a prisoner
    of a realm I could no longer resist belonging to.

    The pain I had always felt—
    It was like a kind of splinter
    pierced into my heart,
    one to which I had grown numb and accustomed.
    So many sorrows had scattered
    across my brief existence,
    leaving no trace among mortals,
    like a tiny, insignificant creature
    adrift in an immense ocean
    of infinite, scattered universes—
    unconnected, and forgotten.

    My silence was heavy with resentment,
    disillusionment, despair, and utter isolation.
    I stood within the cemetery of fairies—
    not the fairies of storybooks,
    But the ones who embodied my abandoned dreams,
    shattered and buried
    In a vast expanse I called a graveyard,
    Though in truth it existed only within my imagination.
    The scene before me was grim and mournful,
    for it mirrored my shadowed soul—
    a soul steeped in torment
    and numbed by the weight of impossibility,
    numbed by the stark realisation
    that I would never reach
    those long-yearned-for desires
    that had once set my heart alight.

    Sweet should have been the tender memories of my life—
    Yet I called them the ghosts of the past,
    for they haunted and tormented my sleep,
    filling my nights with unrest.
    In those troubled hours,
    My heart was relentlessly torn apart
    by the spears of demons
    Who, with dreadful solemnity,
    invaded my chamber unbidden.
    Lisa

  • The Emptiness Within My Mind

    The Emptiness Within My Mind

    The emptiness within my mind
    Is death inside my heart,
    With no golden cage, no precious gems—
    just silence folding round itself,
    no escape, no hope,
    Only absence holding tight.

    Exhausted and devoid of feeling,
    I lay upon the cold earth,
    strewn with withered leaves,
    fallen flowers,
    and shards of abandoned dreams.

    Weeping,
    I heard the intense sound
    of my tears falling
    on leaves shriveled
    by the cold wind of night.

    Nothing remained
    around you,
    around me,
    But only the vague memory
    of those anguishes
    that oppressed me
    and never ceased
    to pursue me.

    I no longer held
    any desire to desire,
    nor to keep
    anything within my heart.

    My heart had ceased
    to be a chest
    of my wishes and whims.

    It was merely
    an empty chest,
    emptied by the fury
    and storms
    that swept over me
    In my wretched existence.

    Not even the stars
    sparkled in the sky
    above my dwelling.

    The heavens refused
    to shine for me.

    Yet they had forsaken me
    to my fate,
    where no hope remained,
    nor even a small flame
    to bring me back to life.

    Whispers and murmurs
    came to me
    In the form of a misty breeze,
    laden with elegies
    and funeral hymns.

    Despair and anguish
    were gifts bestowed upon me,
    like dazzling joys
    that in truth did not shine at all,
    But bound me fast
    In a realm of cruelty,
    wickedness,
    and mercilessness.

    Helpless and fragile,
    like the petals of a well-bloomed flower,
    I could not withstand
    such impetuousness and violence of events,
    so hostile to me—
    like endless storms at sea
    whose fury knows no end.

    The emptiness within my mind
    had become a spirit that subdued me,
    against which I could no longer resist.
    At last, I became part
    of the abyss of oblivion,
    And there I remained for eternity,
    wandering like a cloud
    In a stormy, winter night.
    Lisa

  • Somewhere In My Dreams

    Somewhere In My Dreams

    Somewhere in my dreams, random thoughts enveloped my mind, and the bitter memories of what I have lost—of my buried treasures—saddened my heart.

    It was as if I had surrendered myself to my own steps, walking down an avenue lined with dead trees, and with closed eyes I had defied the wind, which whispered to me words and secrets I no longer remember.

    Weighted down by my anguish, I could not see a glimmer of light, of hope, that might guide me in a clear and lucid direction. All I could find was only chaos and fear—a dread that tormented me, the fear of never being able to grasp my dreams, of never being able to enclose them within the cage of my heart.

    As much as I longed to cling to life, to my plans and dreams, their manifestations fell into the abyss of emptiness—an abyss that sought to swallow me into its chasm.

    And I remembered all the principles that had been taught to me, shaped like a golden cage in which I was made to live my entire life—bound by rigid conventions, dark as chains coiled around my ankles and wrists, suffocating me like sly ivy twisting about my neck, its soft and slender leaves wrapping my face in a silent, silken strangle.

    No, absolutely not. Stupidity has never belonged to me, nor hypocrisy, nor superficiality. And yet, I have always stood beyond an invisible wall—between myself and other mortals, who have always found me unusual, strange, even impossible to define within their social and mental structures.

    Excessively extreme in my obsessions, in my feelings, in my passions and in my visions. I have always been—and still am—a visionary, a dreamer at the mercy of events that have never truly belonged to me, for even now I find their traces in the vault of my past, like fragments of memories scattered across the sky above my head.

    Somewhere in my dreams, I’ve got lost in the labyrinth of reveries, trying to find myself—but in vain, for, in truth, I have never known myself, and I have never found who I truly am. I have always lived with the illusion of knowing, the illusion that others spoke the truth to me—as if their words were pearls of wisdom, as if they could guide me.

    But in the end, what I found was only an illusion. Only betrayal. My heart has been permanently defiled by the torments of mortals and by the shadowy mirages that have always hindered my path.
    Lisa

  • Nightmares And Visions

    Nightmares And Visions

    Nightmares and visions visited me in the middle of the night, when sleep abandoned me to an otherworldly realm never seen nor imagined.
    The fog had clouded every vision, and I could see nothing but the shadows of faint images—spirits moving around me.

    My light sleep was nothing but a portal to a world where torment awaited me, and my heart was torn apart, again and again, without mercy. My gentle expectations had dissolved into the dark horizon, and I could see them no more.

    Indeed, I had become a creature of darkness, devoid of ambitions and expectations, for in truth what was destined for me was absolute emptiness—the total absence of life, love, and joy.

    How could I have held even the smallest hope of escaping that realm of darkness and despair? I no longer knew what life was—full of light, full of love, of hopes and delights.

    Had I been able to foresee my terrifying fate, I might have fled—perhaps among the clouds or the stars—if they had taken me into their realm.

    I might have been melancholic, perhaps—I don’t know—because at that moment I refused to accept any kind of feeling that my heart wished to embrace within itself. It was as if my heart had been torn from my chest and replaced with thorns.

    Pierced and betrayed by that world full of conventions, hypocrisy, titles, and useless materialism, I fled far away but fell into the trap of the world I myself had created in my visions—and that is why nightmares and visions were my most faithful companions, without whom I could not have survived.

    I breathed my last breath and, sighing, surrendered to the cold, sharp, and cruel embrace of the otherworldly realm.
    Lisa

  • The Memories Of The Past

    The Memories Of The Past

    The memories of the past drag me into their swirling realm of despair.
    Alone, I find myself in a desolate place, a pit of the living dead—buried memories in the graveyard of my past. All I see are rows of lifeless trees.

    I pretend it is autumn, or perhaps winter, yet in truth this entire landscape is but a reflection of my dead and decaying soul.
    The darkness of the night does not frighten me—on the contrary, it is part of me. I am no longer who I once was; I have become a spirit of the night.

    The emptiness within me is filled with fears and regrets, and with all that I have lost unconditionally and irreversibly—things I shall never have again. And thus, the wreck of my existence: not only is it wretched, but also laden with pain.

    My cries of pain and my screams of despair are worth nothing. I have never been worth anything—only to wither my soul, already inscribed with daggers of disappointment and betrayals, inflicted by monstrous and mortally deplorable beings.

    All my crumpled desires and shattered dreams lie underground among the remnants of my memories and regrets. Left without emotions and left without words, I surrender to my nightmares, to my anguished obsessions that permeate my heart and tear it into a thousand pieces.

    My tormentors advance relentlessly, ready to tear me apart and destroy me in oblivion and forgetfulness. How much longer I must suffer, I do not know. I only know that cruel fate has entrusted me to the ship of the wretched and lost souls.

    The memories of my past haunt me insolently and give me no peace, and so I shall spend the eternity of my non-existence as a restless spirit.
    Lisa

  • My Illusions

    My Illusions

    My illusions concealed the bright stars and the moon. I was sure that I couldn’t rely totally on my perceptions and conceptions of life and dreams. I didn’t know anything, but the only thing I could do was cry in my loneliness on a long night when no stars and no moon were visible to my eyes. All my memories were hanging in my mind like paintings. They were like thunders during a night storm in the ocean whose foundation was made of nightmares and suspiciousness.

    Beneath the shadows of hollow trees, I found my dwelling to rest free from the clouds of anxiety and distress. No glooms of sadness could prevent me from looking at the night sky. Maybe it was just a dream, but I couldn’t avoid staring at the dark and starless firmament. I dared to question my senses, but all that I could obtain was confusion and dizziness. In a realm where everything seemed absurd, odd, and meaningless, I strove to find a sense in my ephemeral existence.

    I had ceased to comprehend what was truth and what was deception. The night with its frightful shadows and wraiths, became my loyal companion, so sweet and lovely. No one could ever separate us, not even for an instant. The magic wisdom of the gift of madness was so sublime and exquisite. Unique was the foolishness of my silent heart. Invisible and abandoned in the quest for my fate, I explored labyrinths and mangroves in the wilderness of my imagination.

    My illusions deceived me repetitively, as I attempted to sugarcoat my lonely desolation, deprived as I was of every solace and comfort. I saw the dirty squalor being put on the sacred altar of devotion and veneration. Mortal souls preferred profanities and obscenities to sublimity, beauty and virtue. The world of mortals was shamefully collapsing in front of my eyes and I preferred to shut myself down in my boundless dungeon of illusions, nightmares, dreams and hallucinations. To never be back to that false and tainted world.
    Elisabetta

© Esther Racah 2025. All rights reserved.