3 A.M.

Sometimes, when no one’s home, I like to feel my tears dry on my face, running down to my lips so I can taste them.

When I was younger, I used to cry myself to sleep very often. And I used to hope that my pillow remain wet till sunrise, so that maybe someone would notice something was wrong.

But it never did.

No one ever knew.

What’s it with pain?
It comes and goes like the waves in the ocean, crashing so unexpectedly.There are moments when I know I’m hurting, but I don’t feel hurt enough to cry. Others when I don’t know how I ended up on the bathroom floor at 3 AM, with tears streaming down my face.

Sometimes I envy the little girl I used to be. She could cry so easily.
But then the world taught her that her tears were pearls that should remain locked up. She learned the lesson dutifully, along with her arithmetic and literature.

And now that she doesn’t know how to cry anymore, she bites her tongue to stop her tears from spilling and crashes onto the pavement, with no one by her side to catch her.