I never used to cry. Crying was for babies, girls who didn’t know how to properly remove the pea-sized slivers of wood that ruptured their skin. Crying wasn’t for the girl who ran barefoot between the trees, legs as brown as the Indians.

Tears represent weakness. The showing of pain between the stoic emotions of someone who never used to cry.

But now I cry. Big, raindrop sized tears, salty to the taste, roll down my face. Ugly sobs leave my mouth, and I am ashamed.

Crying signifies goodbyes, leaving. I don’t want to leave. The home I never had flashes before me; from the tiniest piece of gravel on the road beneath us to the green lake to the tall pine trees towering above us, as I cry.

The feeling of leaving, the feeling of being alone for the first time in months hits me.

“Shhh, don’t cry,” He tells me.

It can’t be spared. The tears can’t be stopped. I’m one of those people who, once they start crying, can’t stop. The dam has opened, and it is far from over.

I’m enclosed in two arms - two warm ropes of muscle; they surround me. I can’t see the stars, or the pine trees towering above, but it feels better than being alone in the midst of sadness.

Up, down, around. Up, down, around. The feeling of hands is reassuring, calming on my back. The tears soak his shirt through as though he has been standing in the midst of a rainstorm.

“Shhh, everything’s going to be all right.”

How does he know? How does anyone know that the outcome of my life will be all right after this? Leaving means abandoning what is already there. I don’t want to do that.

As if my thoughts before were answered, the first drops of rain hits my head. Another, then another, as if my tears become synonymous with the drops of falling water through the air. I feel more water dripping onto my head. But then I realize, those aren’t raindrops, those are his tears.

He feels emotion too.

Suddenly the space between us feels too far, the grove of pines feels too small, the heavens seem too large. Something has changed between us, even inside myself. The rain keeps on falling onto our heads, but we don’t move. Neither of us want to.

Crying should be for wimps. Girls who get dumped by their boyfriends.
But now crying shows a sign of emotion that can’t be shown through normal feelings.

He removes his arms from around my shoulders, the absence bringing the cold back to me, as if I was in a haze. Slowly, he drags his thumb across my cheeks, wiping away the tears that still quiver there. A remarkable calm is coming over us.

His hand covers mine, and we walk away through the pine trees. Away from the place where pine needles cover the ground, and the sky is partially obscured by the boughs of pines. Away from where the end signified the beginning.