Joy is the death of peace. The swan song of a home’s comfortable melody. Beautiful, grand, and so very telling. I have never been able to rest in the company of joy. The writhing tendrils of its warm embrace coax me from my restful perch within these walls. Fear prepares you, occupies your mind. Melancholy holds you tightly within the arms of so many long lost friends, a bitter touch, sweet in its familiarity. Wrath guides your hand, spurs you forward to action, leaves you no time to think. Joy lies to you. It whispers into your ear, casting sweet nothings into your mind as a siren song to lure you into the well of complacency. When your guard is down, and you find yourself grinning from ear to ear, your mind is open. Your heart unprotected. As my heart flutters with excitement, my mind shutters beneath the ice water halls of my own anxiety. I cannot allow myself to be happy. Cannot allow myself to be found by joy, lest I be enraptured and executed by it’s vile betrayal. So I hide, sequestered within the brick walls of my stonewall heart. Never allowing it’s wicked pestilence to come more than a few steps into my home.