My joy is a collar I wear around my neck that at any moment could grip me, gag me, and kill me swiftly. Think of it like this: a chocolate cake so decadent and rich that the moment it enters your throat, it halts, stops in its place, and you choke. Its thick frosting, cream and sugar, soaks the moist sponge. It suctions to your throat, suffocating you. 

This is joy, the thief of breath and language. I sit in it and my mind feels paralyzed. Yet my body indulges. Oh, that chocolate cake was so good, so good. The taste on my tongue just moments before the pain, sweet velvet, still lingers as I choke on my desire for more. Delicious cocoa brings me back, motivates my flailing, gasping for air, just to taste one more bite. Another deathly bite. 

I fight through the slice, end my night feeling high, and come home to sit and write. I write and I write, and yet no words land on the page. Joy stole my tongue. So I think back on my day and think of all the pain. 

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A man on a run, I can see how his feet sting in the look in his eyes. Is he running and just on a run, or is he running from someone?

At the stairs he slows down and I catch up to him. He’s single stepping, a slow jog up the stairs. In his periphery, I’m also single stepping. He huffs, double times it, and I join him. Together we’re skipping steps, but I beat him to the top. My cold knees pulse in pain but I’ve won an unspoken race, and I feel proud. 

I never understood runners until just then. 

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Today I wore a skirt, on a cold February day, because my best friend planted the idea yesterday. 

“The sun is out. I wish I wore a skirt,” she said. 

It made me want to wear one, too. This morning, I woke to the sun, dressed myself, texted my friend of the skirt I was wearing, and told her to wear the same thing.

“Okay,” she replied, “I’ll join you in this, so you don’t have to freeze alone.” 

It wasn’t the fear of the freeze, I simply wanted someone to join me, for their own joy, for their own reason. Together she and I walk, the wind blowing up our legs, shivering. We felt good despite the season.  

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In the middle of the night I am gripped by a hand so strong I feel it pull my being out of sleep faster than it pulls my body. For a split second, it reaches in so quickly that it moves beyond matter, clutching whatever exists inside me. And I’m awake. 

Oh, beautiful sleep, protecting me in a blissful reverie. The hand stole my peace with the shock of previously joyful memories long gone. It clasped my throat, I could barely breathe. 

In the morning when I remember my lucid nightmare, I regret all that got me there. Every laugh, every kiss, I repented my selfish soul. I regretted the skirt once the sun left for the day, I regretted my stair race when my knee pain didn’t go away, and I regretted that first taste of chocolate cake. But as I write, and I write, the words finally appear. And in the pain, I realize it was joy that brought me here.