I’m sitting behind a wall of tears waiting for the curtains to drop. My body aches to feel the release of emotion that would pour from the salty waters of my soul. I’m sitting here half breathing, wishing I could put this pent-up emotion to use. 

I can’t cry, I can’t breathe, I can’t stifle the unfounded fear. 

All I need know is how do I turn these feelings into power and wisdom that sheds light?

I know the furious futility of hoping to reach another, one who is hellbent on reading my words through their angry eyes. I know I will never be seen. They will twist me to the likeness of the enemy, even though we’ve been friends all our lives. If only they realized there is no right side in war. 

I beg my body to help me hurt just a bit more openly. Let these unwanted tears go to waste. Let them flood the floor and bury me in a quietus shame. No one but we have to know. No one will see. Come now, please.

But I can’t move my mind to let go. So I sit here, solemn, bottled, and half-broken. I wish I could shatter and turn this sorrow into action. I wish I could move but here I remain, stiff and suppressed. You have petrified my body, my soul, my mind. You have turned to stone these useless emotions and it only enrages my impotent tears all the more. 

I don’t cry for you. I wouldn’t ever dare. 

But I can’t cry for me and I desperately ache to do so. How I need to taste the woeful release so my mind can be mine once again. This pain of numbness is worse in so many ways. It forces us outside of ourselves, watching from a far away window and judging harsher than strangers could.

I can’t cry today, but how I wish I could weep until the world is righted or I am ready.