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#140days
I didn’t cry that day. Not the way a mother should when the world splits open. I think shock is a strange kind of mercy; it stiffens your spine, sets your jaw, keeps you breathing when breath should fail. I stayed upright because everyone else needed a place to lean. There were details to decide, hands to hold, people who needed me to nod, to listen, to steady their shaking when mine hadn’t started yet. I wrote his obituary. I wrote his sermon. Two poems because one wasn’t enough to carry the weight of a boy I made, a man I loved. I arranged flowers, Photos and words; pieces of a life while mine quietly fractured beneath my feet. I didn’t cry that week. Not really. A tear here and there, but nothing close to the storm inside me. Shock held the dam in place, like I was made of stone, like grief had missed me when really it was crouched in the corner, waiting. But now, God, now, I cry every day. The dam has burst. I cry in the mornings, in the car, in the kitchen, in the quiet, in the noise, in the space where his voice should be. I don’t understand how I kept myself together outside his house, waiting to be let in, knowing he was gone and still standing, still breathing, still whole enough to function. I don’t understand how shock made me steel when I needed to be water. All I know is this: the tears I couldn’t shed then have found me now. And they come like truth, like confession, like the body finally remembering what the mind tried to forget. I didn’t cry that day. But now; every day is that day, and the tears finally know their way out.
0
Nov 19, 2025
Nov 19, 2025 at 1:16 PM UTC
Krisolver
I didn't cry that day
I didn’t cry that day. Not the way a mother should when the world splits open. I think shock is a strange kind of mercy; it stiffens your spine, sets your jaw, keeps you breathing when breath should fail. I stayed upright because everyone else needed a place to lean. There were details to decide, hands to hold, people who needed me to nod, to listen, to steady their shaking when mine hadn’t started yet. I wrote his obituary. I wrote his sermon. Two poems because one wasn’t enough to carry the weight of a boy I made, a man I loved. I arranged flowers, Photos and words; pieces of a life while mine quietly fractured beneath my feet. I didn’t cry that week. Not really. A tear here and there, but nothing close to the storm inside me. Shock held the dam in place, like I was made of stone, like grief had missed me when really it was crouched in the corner, waiting. But now, God, now, I cry every day. The dam has burst. I cry in the mornings, in the car, in the kitchen, in the quiet, in the noise, in the space where his voice should be. I don’t understand how I kept myself together outside his house, waiting to be let in, knowing he was gone and still standing, still breathing, still whole enough to function. I don’t understand how shock made me steel when I needed to be water. All I know is this: the tears I couldn’t shed then have found me now. And they come like truth, like confession, like the body finally remembering what the mind tried to forget. I didn’t cry that day. But now; every day is that day, and the tears finally know their way out.
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