Cry Me a River

When my father died,

the house did not collapse.

It continued its small obediences;

the refrigerator humming,

the clock insisting on seconds,

the faucet dripping into a stainless-steel sink

that reflected nothing back.

People arrived with hands full of softness.

They pressed my shoulders,

said the phrases that have survived generations:

He lived well.

He is at peace.

Time will help.

I nodded as if I had signed something.

A river can carry more than a million tons of water per second.

At the funeral, I watched my mother

fold her grief into the corners of a handkerchief.

She did not let it spill.

She did not let it flood.

She stood like a shoreline

pretending erosion is a myth.

That night, alone in my childhood room,

I expected tears to arrive dramatically;

a storm against the ribs,

a cinematic surrender.

Instead, there was only a steady pressure,

as if something behind my eyes

had learned restraint too well.

Friends say, Cry me a river,

half-joking,

as though sorrow were indulgence,

as though volume could measure love.

But grief is not a performance.

It is a current moving underground,

quiet and relentless,

reshaping what it touches

without spectacle.

I wash dishes.

I answer emails.

I stand in grocery lines

beneath fluorescent mercy.

The world continues

with astonishing indifference.

Sometimes, in the middle of an ordinary task,

my chest tightens;

not enough to break,

not enough to flood

just enough to remind me

that something vast

is moving beneath the surface.

The river does not ask permission.

It does not explain its depth.

It moves forward,

carrying what it must,

even when no one can see it.