They told us tears were trouble,
a crack in the mask,
a plea for attention,
a sign we weren’t strong enough—
so we swallowed storms whole,
let the thunder shake inside our chests,
never daring to let it pour.

They taught girls that crying was dramatic,
a script rewritten to seem small,
a fault in the fabric of being “too much.”
They told boys it made them weak,
that strength was silence,
that pain should be caged behind quiet eyes.

But tears are not weakness.
They are rivers that carry the weight,
a language of the soul
when words fail to hold what aches.
They do not make you less,
only more—
more human, more real, more free.

So cry if you need to.
Let it fall like rain on thirsty ground,
and know—
I will never see you any differently.