Some Tears Are Not The Same: What Grief Has Taught Me

Some tears are not the same.

There are the kind that don't just fall

they sear,

scorching trails down your cheeks

like lit kerosene,

until your face is a map

of where the fire has been.

They don't just flow

they wrench,

hook barbed wire through your ribs

and drag you backward

over gravel and glass,

through the hours

you swore you'd survived.

Some pain is doubly injurious

not a wound, but a haunting.

The call that doesn't end

when the phone clicks dead.

The voice that slithers from your ears

into the marrow:

“We are so sorry to inform you”

And suddenly, you are back there.

A decade? A second?

Time is a liar.

Grief is a knife

that cuts the same groove

over and over,

until the blade is the wound.

I used to sit between her knees,

the tug-tug-snap of the comb

parting my scalp into rows,

her fingers weaving stories

into each braid.

Hold still, pumpkin

this one's for patience,

this one's for pride.

The weight of my hair

swung heavy down my back,

her voice humming low

like Sunday choir.

Now, when I oil my own hair,

the mirror shows her hands

where mine should be

my crown a testament

to the love that still holds me

by the roots.

But listen:

this ache is not mine alone.

It is the same tear

that fell when mothers

pressed their faces

into the soil of unmarked graves,

when they wailed into the necks

of children they could not keep.

It is the same breath

that left my mother's body

when she imagined, even once,

the unthinkable:

her hands empty,

her arms cradling air.

Grief is the debt

we inherit like braids—

each generation's sorrow

woven into the next.

I keep her photo by the door

some days, I pass it like a stranger.

Other days, her eyes follow me,

heavy as hands on my shoulders.

I stand there, whispering

until the air changes:

a song she loved coils from a passing car,

or the ghost of her perfume

bruises the room

Shalimar, gardenias, Blue Nile,

suddenly, the threshold is an altar.

My face is hers, sharpening yearly

in the mirror's silvered glass.

I part my hair with her comb,

still flecked with strands

of our shared history.

I crave the things she loved:

Belizean biscuits, ginger beer

things I never liked,

but swallow now like communion.

Her hands live in mine

when I knead the dough too long,

when I press too hard

on the pencil, like she did.

My mother and I shared the same heart.

Not metaphor—biology

Her breath was my first rhythm.

My success, her mirror:

a reflection she polished

with her own vanishing hands.

“We are so sorry to inform you”

No.

Inform the earth

it must spin without her laughter.

Inform the sky

it lost its favorite color.

Inform my body

it will forever hum her name

in the dark.

Grief lives in my scalp,

where her nails scratched gently

to soothe me.

In my shoulders, still squared

by the weight of her pride.

In my feet, still pacing the halls

of a house that exists only

in the scent of Dax and Murray’s

and the static of her favorite tune.

Some love is not the same.

It doesn't leave

it unmakes.

Unmakes my joy into a lesser hue.

Unmakes my prayers into questions.

Unmakes the world into a place

where "before" and "after"

are the only continents that matter.

I am sorry to inform you:

I will never be the same.

But I am learning

to hold this ache like a relic

not for the pain,

but for the love that birthed it.

To let the tears be holy water.

To let the grief be a language

only she and I still speak.

Because some tears are not the same.

And neither is the love

that earns them.

Doc Rain