A moth is a small, forgettable creature, and Jason Ridpath's "Cry or Laugh" rests nearly everything on one. In the first line, "You came back as a moth," a dead person, addressed only as "you," returns in insect form. Many people know some version of the folk belief that a moth turning up at the right moment might be a visitor from the other side, and the poem leans on that idea without explaining it. What it explores is what a grieving person does with such a visit: welcome it, mock it, or send it away.
The first reaction is closer to laughter. "You were being a pest" is what you would say to a living friend who kept hovering around you. The phrase "were being" makes the nuisance sound ongoing, as if the moth is still bumping around the room. The line also rhymes with the next, "pest" and "test," and that neat, almost playful chime fits the teasing mood. But "See if I could past the test" shifts the tone. The grammar is rough, and "past" may be a slip for "pass." Either way, it gives the voice an unpolished, unguarded sound. "See if" is also a dare. The speaker seems to be measuring himself against something, though the poem never says what. Judging by the ending, the test may have to do with drinking, but that is an inference, not something the text states.
The middle of the poem changes voice. "We love you. / We miss you. / Can't wait to see you again." The speaker's "I" gives way to a group "we," and the language becomes ready-made, the kind of thing written in sympathy cards or said at a graveside. Each sentence is short and sits on its own line, so the phrases land like a recited ritual. Yet nobody tells a moth "can't wait to see you again" without some strain. The words are cheerful on the surface, but placed in a poem about loss they carry a hint of impatience for reunion. The word "you" runs through almost every line, so the dead person stays at the center even as the speaker tries to get away from them.
Then comes the sharpest turn: "Be quiet old friend." The moth makes no sound, so the command may really be aimed at the chorus of condolences, or at the speaker's own memory, which won't stop talking. "Old friend" softens the order and shows real warmth beneath the irritation. The line half-rhymes with "again" in the one before, but "again" and "friend" don't quite match, as though the earlier tidiness is already slipping.
The last two lines are the longest in the poem, and they change its manner. "I don't need comfort in you. / Liquor will not heal my wounds." The odd "in," comfort found in a person or presence, sounds like a refusal to lean on the memory of the dead. The speaker also says "I don't need" with a firmness that invites doubt, since people rarely announce what they don't need unless the need is pressing. "Liquor" is the only concrete temptation the poem names, and "wounds," plural and unexplained, is the only place the speaker's own damage appears. The future tense, "will not heal," sounds like something learned the hard way, or something repeated as a warning to oneself. These lines have no rhyme to cushion them, so the poem stops on a flat statement rather than a resolution.
That bareness is much of the poem's strength. It never explains who died, how, or why the speaker might turn to drink, and it doesn't need to. Its short lines work like quick shifts of mood: a joke, a dare, a chorus of love, an order to be quiet, a refusal. The title offers a choice, "Cry or Laugh," but the poem shows how grief often won't choose. It begins by half-laughing at a moth and ends in something closer to a clenched jaw, without ever quite weeping. For a reader, the value lies in that honesty, in how plain words can hold affection, annoyance, longing, and defensiveness all at once, much as they do for someone watching a small insect circle a light and wondering who it might be.