I do my crying underwater

“Demons,” The National

he met a sad woman

she was often incredibly sweet
and she was always
disorientingly beautiful
and disarmingly smart

but also always very very sad

and from time to time
when he looked at her
he couldn’t disentangle
the sad from the beautiful

so he had to find places
to cry hard and silently
until the ache at the center
of him settled into something gentle

like tossing a ball
over and over
to an overeager puppy
in a mulch-filled dog park

—P.L. Thomas