Melancholy and Joy

I. Melancholy and joy, like oil and water, do not combine (like water in a bath of acid). The twain never do meet in a single psyche, a single soul, a single mind, II. or in a single life like mine. And often in between are vast tracts of gray, of feeling from day to day so numbed from my daily sacrifice of seeing my life III. slip away from me like water out of my hands, like life-giving blood leaving my capillaries and veins in sickle cell disarray even on Sabbath days. IV. Melancholy and joy, this competing twin (of heaven and hell), have no purgatory for me: I either ascend into bliss; or I descend into a burning ashtray.