it starts like the way salt lingers in the ocean. you tell me to open the window and let the light in as if light were not already something that splinters inside me, bends and refracts against the edges of my ribs. you tell me to drink more water, take a walk outside, read a book—a plethora of commands you hoped will solder the cracks shut. so i have walked until my long legs dissolved into the sidewalk, read until the words burned my eyes, until even the spaces between the lines became a place i could no longer fit my life in.

i want to tell you about the mornings when gravity is heavier than it should be, how the lemon-infused air thickens into the woolen scarf around my neck, how i breathe but never fully inhale. i want to tell you that sadness is not in fact a storm. it's the sky after the storm, heavy, wet-limbed, smelling of old rain. i want you to know that sorrow isn't a room in need of better lighting, but a cracked house i inherited but never chose to live in.

you tell me we come from strong women, women who never sat too long in their sorrow. as if happiness was a certificate of origin stamped at birth that i left behind carelessly in a cab or a gas station restroom. but i know what was swallowed, what was buried beneath the exorbitant dinner plates and folded laundry, beneath prayers whispered to ceilings that never answered back.

i want you to see how i am learning to carry this ache the way you carry a bowl of water across the room, careful not to spill but knowing you will, just a little. i have sat in full sun and still felt nothing. i have stood in crowds and heard nothing but the echo of my own body, its soft please, please, please against the walls of my ribs.

still, i try to explain. i tell you sadness is a language i am still learning to translate, that it does not always come with a reason, that some nights i dream of water rising and houses slipping into the sea. you nod but do not understand.

i wonder if, after all these years, we have been speaking different languages all along.