Dave Bonta's poem reads like a list of rules for living with sadness, delivered in a calm, almost deadpan voice. The epigraph tells us it takes its cue from a drawing by Alejandra Pizarnik, titled "la volonté de tristesse," or the will to sadness. So the speaker isn't trying to escape grief but to make a workable, even dignified, life alongside it.
The advice is strange and tender. Stay partly buried. Let opossums eat the pieces you've lost. Name the flies but leave the "joyful spider" unnamed, as if some happiness should be left alone. At a dance, don't cling "as if drowning." The line about being "a small salt lake" suggests a self that is shallow, still, and a little harsh, yet its own landscape. The ending gives the clearest comfort: everything the speaker knows about rhythm came from rain. The mood is quiet, wry, and accepting, with sorrow treated as something to learn from rather than defeat.