My mouth tastes like salt.
I wish I could cry like normal people do. When they grieve.
I don’t.
I try.
I can’t get my body to relax enough to sob.
Where I come from, it’s not safe to cry.
You cry you will get your ass whipped more.
So I’ve trained my body not to cry.
Especially when I grieve.
I don’t cry.
I’m eating sugar.
Cakes.
Cookies.
Vegan donut holes by the dozens.
I don’t even like sugar.
I just miss him.
It’s amazing to me how I can miss a person who just transitioned but not miss him even when I haven’t touch his face in two years.
Weird, huh?
When I look in the mirror I see grief has moved in and made home.
Etching it’s cruel mark as flabby skin, hard wrinkles, numb eyes.
No desire to bathe.
To talk.
To breathe.
I feel nothing on the inside.
That’s why I wish I could cry.
Tear water would melt the mountain of salt that clogs my voice into an abyss of impossibly stretched open-mouth silent screams…
Then I could taste food again.
If I could just cry, I could feel.
That’s why I don’t.
I don’t want to feel.
If I felt, I would drown.
In a sea of salt from my unshed-able
tears.
Title: I wish I could cry…
by: Dr. Venus Opal Reese
01.05.21
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