I wish I could cry…

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