Sadness does not announce itself with bloodied knuckles and a boot through the door. It is quieter than that. Perhaps crueller, as it seeps in the corners of a room like melancholic damp, turning the wallpaper soft with memory; it makes the floorboards creak with the weight of every ghost you tried to bury beneath them. It does not scream because it does not need to. Patient and pale, until the air curdles around you with what was said and what could never properly be spoken,