They taught us to blink the salt in—
that tears are currency for the fragile
and we must never spend
To lead, you must clench your jaw
crack your spine straight like scripture
and let the pain nest in the lungs
where no one sees.

We became statues with glass eyes
shined and bulletproof
Even grief feared our silence.
We held funerals in our throats
prayers sewn shut behind polite smiles
and called it strength—
this ache that made us godlike
this discipline of drowning
without making a sound.

But the body remembers
The body always does
It will drag your sorrow
into the marrow of your bones
weave sorrow into sleep
turn breaths into broken glass
and eyelids into knives.

Somewhere between
“I’m fine” & “I don’t feel anything anymore,”
we vanished—
a thousand storms swallowed
by skin that refused to leak.
No one taught us that tears
weren’t weakness—
they were rain.
They were the only thing
keeping the garden of us
from withering in silence.
But we were too busy being strong
to water ourselves.

We led by example—
held our cries
so others could sleep through the night.
But in doing so,
we buried the child in us
with lullabies made of restraint.
And what a cruel lie it is—
to teach the brave not to bleed,
to crown the silent as heroes,
while their hearts rot quietly
in the dark.

Even the moon
cracks under it's own light
Even steel weeps
when the fire lingers too long

So cry—
Let them cry.
Let the sky split.
Let the flood rise.
It is not weakness
to feel too much—
It is survival
To feel at all.


Erennwrites