Despair

"Her eyes are grey.

Her hair is straggy and wet.

Her fingers are stubby.

The nails are chewed and broken.

Her teeth are crooked, jagged things.

There is a vacancy in her gaze, a feeling of absence when you are near her that is impossible to put into words.

Her sigil is the hooked ring.

One day her hook will catch your heart.

Describing her, we articulate what she is and why she is:

when hope is past, she is there.

She is in a thousand thousand waiting rooms and empty streets, in grey concrete buildings and anonymous hotels.

She is on the other side of every mirror.

When the eyes that look back you know you too well,

and no longer care for what they see, they are her eyes.

She stands and waits, and in her posture the pain no longer tells you to live, and in her presence joy is unimaginable. (...)

It is a peculiar, flat memory,
in which things become bleak and bounded by the dark.
There is joy in there,
of course,
and love,
and touching.
The presence that makes the
presence absence unbearable.
Without triumph,
without love,
without joy,
her work would be for nothing. (...)

To be Despair. It is a portrait.
Only close your eyes and feel."

- Neil Gaiman -
(The Sandman, Endless Nights)