tortoise-shell glasses

i'm wearing my glasses today because, when i woke up this morning, my eyes were still swollen from last night, and i couldn't get my contacts to stick. it was a big weep, the kind that you try and hold back for a week as the storm grows inside of you, waves slapping at your ribcage, and eventually crests and breaks, flattening everything in its path. 

lyss is writing her SIP on tears, which i think is brilliant, examining why we cry, why different emotions produce the same physical reaction, their social utility. my question is this: can you store up tears? is there a well, or a rain barrel, that gradually fills and overflows? some people seem to pour out their barrel often with only a few inches in the bottom; others wait until the well is filled to the brim and let it all out in one, long torrential downpour. some people's barrels fill more quickly than others- some overflow in a couple of days, others a couple of years. 

i cried for so long that i fell asleep crying, until hannah came in and woke me up, laughing at my "raccoon eyes." grief has a way of creeping up on you, sneaking up and undoing you just with a tap on the shoulder. i made a photo album at christmas time full of pictures of missing things, things i associated with loss, and i looked through it for the first time last night, leafing through photographs of my family, our houses, childhood, my dad, flight, roots, wings. 

everything comes in waves: grief, tears, loss, seasons. the palm-reader staring down into my hand sees not lines but circles, spirals, things that come, go, and return again. i feel like everywhere i look, there are parallels, signs that it's beginning again. it's time to leave again, it's time to lose again. i was born in a brick house in illinois and moved to new york city at the end of my first summer. after traveling the world, we came full circle, and i turned eighteen in that same brick house in illinois and moved to new york city on my own at the end of the summer. both times, i took nothing with me but clothes and several boxes of books. one of the last times i saw my dad, i picked him up from the hospital, the psychiatric ward. he had a plastic band on his wrist with his name and numbers, and after he took it off, we tried to play a board game at home, as he stared out the window, distracted. on sunday, i played a board game with a dear friend who stared at the floor, distracted, and on monday he committed himself to the hospital, to the psychiatric ward. the hospital didn't keep my dad safe from himself, and i'm afraid. i can't sleep at night. i fear for the people i love, that they will come to harm. that they will harm themselves. 

my barrel fills quickly, and when i am alone, in solitude, it overflows with a force that takes my breath away and makes my body ache all the next day.