These feel different.
They are sticky old now and later candies at the bottom of a purse no one has used since last Easter.
They are hot but not like a cleaning hot.
Not the hot we like to see in our dishwater.
They are verge of fever hot.
Vomit in a cold toilet hot.
They are gross and embarrassing.

It has been six years.
I used to think I was stuck in the deep sadness of my mother’s death and that one day something would shake me loose.
It’s a doldrum. I’m at an equator line. My life with my mom is on the other side of the world.
No matter where I am, that part of life is the other side.
And the tears know it.

So they take their time.
They fall like the old Alaga syrup.
Like they got all the time in the world.
They sit on the edge of the boat hoping for a storm.
Something freeing.
It isn’t coming though.
This is home now and the first wave of tears are the ones that know this.