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Posts Tagged ‘crying’

All the Tears

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 14, 2025| 4 Comments »

 
 
As I cry chopping onions,
I imagine the onions
cry for me, too, and
with each slice, they
wonder when I will ever
peel off all these layers I’ve
been adding in the name
of growth. When I add
the onions to the pan,
they become more clear.
You can do it, too,
they seem to say.  
Let the world open you
and weep with the gift
of giving yourself away.
 

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Just One Scene in One Movie

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on September 1, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
and all the scaffolding
that has held me up
crashes down
and I stumble
from the theater
to find myself
in my body,
heart naked as a cloud.
I crouch in the dry dirt
behind a building,
weeping,
unable to stand,
stunned again
by the truth
of loving what
must be lost.
When finally I rise,
my hat comes off.
How right
if feels in my hair,
on my face,
the wind.
 

  • after watching Sentimental Value at Telluride Film Festival

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Waking on Day of the Dead

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 2, 2024| 8 Comments »


 
 
Eyes still closed, the world
still dark, in my mind
I name my beloveds
no longer here
and my thoughts
become an altar.
I imagine each of their faces,
each of their voices,
surround them with snapdragons
and calendula, smooth stones
and white feathers.
Eventually dawn slips in
as if to light inner candles.
How does it do that, the light?
How does it enter me even
when the eyes are closed?
The dead, too, seem
to find their way in.
I linger with them.
It is beautiful.
When I finally open my eyes
the salt from the altar
has spilled all over my pillow.

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Gold Medal

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on February 22, 2024| 11 Comments »

 
 
I’ve beaten my own record. Again.
Most tears shed while thinking
of people who are kind.
First tears in the audience
at an elementary choir concert.
Longest number of days in a row
weeping for any reason.
If crying were a sport,
I’d be a contender.
Furthest distance
for projectile tears.
Most Kleenex’s used
while reading a single poem.
Greatest variety of emotions
that might inspire weeping.
I did have a good coach
in my mother. My grandfather.
My aunt. They modeled
crying for love, for grief,
for sincerity, for prayer.
I’m a legacy, really,
natural talent, plus
practicing all the time.
Blue sky? Bawling. Brave kids?
Sobbing. Great loss?
I’ve been a puddle for years.
And to think I used to try
to stop the tears.
As if they were something
to be ashamed of.
As if they didn’t make me
a real winner.

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Reasons to Weep

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 3, 2023| 17 Comments »

 
 
Because I’m flooded
with feelings, I weep.
Because feelings
are not enough, I weep.
Because your actions
have moved, me, I weep.
Because there is so much more
that wishes to be moved, I weep. I weep.
I weep because someone must weep.
Is it true, someone must weep?
Once they hired women to weep
because they knew the expression
of grief was essential—
they paid them to wail
and scratch at their faces and mourn.
But what does the blue sky care if I weep?
Or the gray sky? Or sunset? Or dawn?
What do tears mean to the dead?
What do they mean to the living?
I weep because I can’t stop the tears.
I weep because tears can’t stop me.
I weep because tears invite me
into the flow of all water,
the flow which goes the way all things go,
away from the self to shores of the all,
and from the shores of the all
back into the core of the self.
 

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One Inner Weather Report

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 16, 2021| Leave a Comment »


 
 
months after the storm
still,
the rain

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The Day Marcus Aurelius Wept

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 15, 2021| 4 Comments »




And so the boy who would become
the emperor of Rome, the boy
who would one day defeat the Parthian Empire
and rebel Kingdom of Armenia,
the boy who would rule through the Antonine Plague
the boy who would become father of Stoicism—
when that boy learned of the death
of his favorite tutor, he wept and wept,
was a wild and uncontrollable thing.
And his stepfather, the emperor,
refused to let him be comforted
or calmed. “Neither philosophy
nor empire takes away natural feeling,”
he said. Oh, the gift of being given ourselves—
despite teachings, despite expectation,
despite shoulds, despite strength—
the gift to fall deeper into our own humanness,
horrible and beautiful as it is, to know the terrible
blessing of love, oh how it hurts, to know
ourselves as tender beings, to trust how
our love touches everything. Everything.  

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Ode to Syn-propanethial-S-oxide

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 17, 2020| 4 Comments »

You hide in the flesh of onions

the way hope hides in certain Superbowl commercials.

It’s not that I don’t expect you,

so why does it feel like an ambush when you,

chemical irritant released into air,

bring tears to my eyes and I stand there

at the kitchen counter weeping

over the cutting board,

weeping as if a lover died,

as if listening to cello,

as if I realize again there is so much suffering

in the world I cannot change.

You remind me it’s natural to cry—

that waterworks are hardwired into the eyes.

You teach me sometimes what nourishes us

also burns.

There are times when I’ve wondered

why we aren’t all weeping—

weeping for the lack of connection,

weeping for children who hunger,

weeping for love between friends

and the red of maple leaves—

it’s as if you give us permission,

prepare the pathways,

so that when at last we succumb

to our glorious humanity

we don’t try to hide it,

we don’t act as if it’s a problem,

we just stand in the center of the room

and let those hot tears

fall down our cheeks,

the salt sharp and hot on our tongues.

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Why the Women Cry

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on January 19, 2014| 13 Comments »

Why the Women Cry

Lara and I sit side by side in her rocking chairs.
Like old women. We are old women.
Or at least much older than when we first
had sleepovers at her house in seventh grade.
She would tell me her secretest thoughts
late at night and I, laying in the trundle
bed beneath and beside her would often fall asleep
in the middle. Oh how she would pummel
me then with her pillow. Her anger was
as real as her tears.

*

At first I think she is laughing. I turn
down the music to hear the small
gurgles in the backseat. It is dark.
Sweetheart, I say to my girl, are you laughing?
Now I hear they are sobs.

*

In the search bar I type:
myth why people cry.
In seconds I am led to 9,980,000
results. People crying for myth.
Myths about crying and depression.
But there are no stories I can find
about the why of the tears.

*

It was her nephew who died.
As we rock, we talk about him and his life.
She loved him. He was the first
child she ever knew. Avalanche.
Though it doesn’t much matter,
the why. He’s dead. She says,
I knew him, but I never really knew him.
He never totally let me in.

*

My daughter is scared.
Mom, she says, are there any
other cars going the same way
that we are going?
Yes, my love, I say. We are moving
at the same rate and at the same time
in the same direction, so we cannot see them.
Does it scare you that we seem to be alone?
Yes, she says. Yes, I say, it can be scary
to feel alone.

*

Once upon a time there lived a woman.
She was all alone. She lived by the sea.
The sea frightened her. It was vast
and deep and full of things
she could not understand.

*

Lara does not cry. Not tonight.
She tells me about how her nephew
has lived so much in such a short time.

*

Grown ups don’t cry, my daughter says,
when I tell her it’s alright to cry.
Oh sweetheart, I say, yes they do.
Mommy cries all the time.

*

The woman who lived by the sea
stood on the beach and looked at the water
for many, many days.
At last she said to the ocean,
what do you have to teach me?
And the ocean said nothing at all.
But she could feel in her such
a great, great emptiness
so she began to drink. At first
a sip. Then another. She could taste in it
the unfurling of the intricate undersea fans.
She could taste in the water the blood of a recent kill.
She could taste the wreckage, the rainbow,
the force of the waves. And she drank
and she drank and she drank.

*

When I was 23, I remember
reading in a magazine about
how if you cried more than 2 times
a week, it meant that you were depressed.
Oh, I thought, but I cry at least two times a day,
and I am the happiest person I know.

*

And when she had swallowed the entire sea,
the violence, the glassine façade, the sludge
and the tug and the roar and the still,
she sat on the beach and was satisfied
that it all was inside of her.
Until she remembered the pleasure,
could it be? that she’d felt when she was
more empty. Less knowing. Less full
of it all. More thirsty. More space.
The world then was more mysterious.
And she began to, what was it?
cry. Something no one had done
before. Oh the salt. Oh the sting.
Oh the ferocity of the act as the sea
spilled out of her. And sometimes, too,
she leaned into the gentleness.
And slowly the shore became a shore
and again the sea became a sea.
And the woman then understood
what it meant to gain and lose things.

*

This night, when I am ready for sleep,
Lara does not throw her pillow at me.
She kisses me good night, and we lean
our bodies into each others bodies,
then climb the stairs to our husbands, our beds.

*

Mama, she says, you cry?
Oh yes, my love. I try to imagine
how she has not seen this before.
Inside I feel the teeth of the eel,
the ship without an anchor,
the shifting of the rising shore.

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