I didn't think I would be the type of person to cry on the bus, or the train, or in the supermarket, or the backroom at work. I thought I was more an alone-in-my-room person. But you surprise yourself, when you grow. Crying in public feels better sometimes, feels good. Even if it's about sad things. At home I'm isolated, surrounded, swimming in my own grief and reminders of my little life. But in town I'm afloat on the details of other people, of more people than I could ever know. The bus exists not for me alone, but to carry everyone in this city from place to place, all with their own missions and jobs and grocery bags. How can I get overwhelmed when six feet away from me a woman is fixing her toddler's hair? When behind me a bundled up student reads a book? How large can my sadness be? There are no walls separating me, my private pain, from the world; I am a part of it wholly. I can shed my tears and they will not return to me or pool at my feet.

I like to cry at the paintings in the museum, at the fish in the aquarium, the entire concept of the library. I was at the library, feeling fragile, and started crying at a Calvocoressi poem. And then I looked up because there was a child walking by, their nose in one of those kiddie board books, reading aloud with only a few stumbles, and doing funny voices. And suddenly I was crying different tears.

Church can be nice, if a bit more stifling. Out in the woods or the lake, when it's not too cold. In the apartment building's laundry room, overcome with emotion at the book I'm reading. At my desk at work, sometimes-- that one kind of sucks, to be fair.