The Crying Book

When I am in the fog of despair I fear I cry too much to be a good partner or parent or person, that something within me is utterly broken, that any reprieve—a day of joy! a poem!—is temporary and somehow false. But that is the fog doing its work, making everything large and grotesque. When the fog lifts I can point up, say Look, it is a cloud.

I mistook myself for a researcher, when I am a weeping subject.

People talk about the fog of pregnancy, the forgetfulness, the book neatly put away in the refrigerator. The other week I tried to make a new friend, but became distracted before writing down my phone number’s last two digits.

Another friend tells me that upon learning she was pregnant she thought, “I’m not alone anymore.”

women signal through their tears that they feel unsafe, misunderstood, or attacked, the whole world rises in their defense. The mythic nature of white female vulnerability compels protective impulses to arise in all men, regardless of race.

“I have dreamed of you so much that you are no longer real,” writes Robert Desnos to his beloved

tears are a form of communication

Some people will write about one thing as a way of not writing about something else. Like Tony Tost:
I don’t know how to talk about my biological father, so I am going to describe the lake: it’s blue, with swans.17

When I ask if someone would be willing to read Aram Saroyan’s one-word poem “lighght”197 aloud, a poet says, “I will,” walks to the corner of the room, and switches the lights rapidly on and off.198

We all flicker. For just a moment, we have moved inside the poem.