When What’s Cut Stays Cut

by Roger B. Rueda

They say wisdom is knowing when to cut something off and when to let it grow. But, as Alma Anonas-Carpio so poignantly writes in Sauce of Tears, there are some things that, once severed, will never return—no matter how many tears we shed over them.

This is the tragic, infuriating, and often absurd reality of life. One moment, we are crying over crooked bangs, demanding the return of what was lost, and the next, we realize that not everything is as easily replaced as hair. It grows back, yes, but not everything does. This is where life tricks us—giving us illusions of permanence when, in reality, everything is fragile.

The poem is deceptively simple. It starts with a child’s outrage over a disastrous haircut. A travesty! A blatant offense against aesthetics! And yet, the mother, in her maddening, all-knowing wisdom, simply declares, "What is cut stays cut." No negotiations. No appeals. Then, as mothers do, she softens—offering the assurance that hair will grow back. Because any mother worth her weight in wisdom knows the truth: some things heal with time, but others remain lost forever.

But the real pain is not in the bangs. It is in the things that no longer grow back. The absence of the mother—the one who offered those exasperated sighs, those warm hugs, those ice cream bribes—is a wound that will never heal. And so the child, now grown, is left with the echoes of comfort from a voice that is no longer there.

Anonas-Carpio gives us a masterclass in quiet devastation. There are no theatrics here, no grand proclamations of grief—just the cold, inescapable reality of loss. That, my dear readers, is the real tragedy. Some things, no matter how much we want them to, never grow back.

And that last line—acceptance is a dish served in a sauce of tears.

What a punch in the gut. This is no fairytale resolution. No “happily ever after.” Only the bitter taste of sorrow, swallowed down like a meal we never wanted, but must consume. This is life. This is the truth we spend years trying to avoid.

And so we return to the beginning—what is cut stays cut. The only thing left to do is swallow the grief and move forward. Maybe with a stiff drink. Maybe with a curse or two. But move forward we must, because the cruelest joke of all is that while the dead remain dead, the living must keep on living.

And we do.

Even if we no longer get ice cream after the crying.