What the Tears Won’t Do I found out, and the finding didn’t break me open. It just stopped something, quiet as a door easing shut in another room. I keep waiting for the sob, the old kind that used to fold me in half, but it comes up short now, water without weather behind it. I sit here. That’s the whole verb. Not moving is its own kind of work when the floor won’t tell you which way is forward. They say find purpose, they say love again, they say happy like it’s a light switch and not a room you have to relearn in the dark, hands out, shins bruised on furniture you used to know by heart. I don’t understand anything. Not why it ended, not why my body forgot how to finish crying, not what I’m supposed to want now. But maybe not understanding is just honesty standing still. Maybe the answer isn’t a door but a season, and I am so early in it, still counting the ways I don’t have to know yet.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​