Crying isn’t pretty. I don’t care who the fuck wrote it as roses blossoming from your tired eyes, or waterfalls slowly descending from your tear ducts. Crying isn’t something that makes you feel like the words of a sonnet. No, crying isn’t fucking pretty. I saw the girl I love cry once and her mouth twisted into a snarl, like a dog about to bite. Snot ran down her nose, along the curve of her lip and onto the pillow of my bed. I had just washed my sheets that day. Her face scrunched up like she had just been punched in the stomach and her hands balled into little fists like she was waiting to punch them back. But she couldn’t. She didn’t. She just cried and I watched how her mascara started to smear down her cheeks, in long black trails that reminded me of mud dragged into the house from the bottoms of your shoes. I saw the girl I love cry so hard her shoulders shook like there was an earthquake but nobody else was under the doorframe waiting for the roof to cave in. She sobbed so hard that her breathing was ragged; a knife in between her ribcage, a blockage in her throat. She cried until she made no noise, but still her mouth moved like a fish pulled out the water and left there to hang in its oxygen hell. Her face got all red and blotchy and I could have sworn I had seen a painting that looked almost like she did, in that moment. But crying isn’t pretty. No, it’s not supposed to be. She told me her chest was hurting and her head was aching and she felt so real to me. With her hair scattered in all directions, and train tracks in black lines crawling down her face, she was so real and she was so beautiful and she was in so much pain but she looked at me and smiled anyways. No, crying is not pretty but I knew right then I would be so lucky to be the one to cry at our wedding.
Crying Isn’t Pretty (k.p.k)
