The Language of My Family
Tears never ask permission.
They show up at 2am with old memories,
at weddings when the vows sound like goodbye,
at traffic lights when a song knows too much.
They are salt and memory and surrender,
the body’s way of saying:
This mattered. This cut deep. I was here.
I used to wipe them fast,
ashamed of being see-through.
As if grief was something to fold away
neatly, like laundry,
before anyone noticed I was unraveling.
But tears are not weakness.
They are the flood that clears the road
so something else can pass.
Then — not right away, never right away
a smile moves in.
It doesn’t come to compete.
It doesn’t say “forget.”
It just sits next to the ache
and sets a second plate at the table.
Small. Unsteady. Real.
A smile is hope with muscle memory.
It’s the corner of my mouth remembering
birthdays, stupid jokes,
the way his laugh used to start in his eyes.
It’s rebellion in the softest form:
You did not take everything from me.
Some days the tears win.
Some days the smile does.
Most days they take turns
like old friends sharing one chair.
And I’m learning to stop apologizing
for the days they both show up.
Because this is what living looks like:
Not choosing between breaking and shining,
but letting the crack be where light gets in.
Not silence or song,
but the breath between verses.
Tears watered the ground.
Smiles grew anyway.
And here I am
not healed, not whole,
but human enough to wear both
on the same face
and call it a life.
©oriole_b
R