In addition to flooding caused by a grieving young widow, the U.N. warns the world’s air could forever smell of gardenias, the very flowers worn in her hair on her wedding day.

NEW YORK—Warning that such occurrences pose a grave threat to the global economy and millions of human lives, a report presented Thursday at a United Nations summit on magical realism highlights an alarming increase in incidences in which the whole world is completely flooded by the tears of a grieving woman.


The U.N. paper states that these fantastic and potentially catastrophic events, in which a woman unleashes an endless torrent of tears over her deceased husband or the sting of unrequited love, may raise global sea levels by as much as 30 centimeters by the year 2050, which according to projections could lead to widespread coastal erosion and leave many of the world’s largest cities—including New York, Mumbai, and Jakarta—at least partially underwater.

“The bitter tears of forlorn women flowing for seven years without ceasing is a grave global threat that we can no longer afford to ignore,” said U.N. magical realism expert Dr. Adam Weber, noting that a devastating increase in soil salinity and a corresponding spike in grain prices can be linked to episodes in which a young bride, and then her mother, all of her sisters, and her aunts, begin to cry after the family’s most beloved son is taken away and raised by the wealthy but cruel landowners in the valley below. “Should these sorrowful individuals continue in their lamentation, particularly when they see their lost love’s face reflected in the changua soup they are preparing, our research predicts mass global flooding that displaces hundreds of millions of people living in low-lying coastal areas, putting pressure on already finite natural resources and causing untold trillions of U.S. dollars in lost GDP.”


“In fact, if just one more iron-hearted matriarch forbids her granddaughter from marrying the farmhand she most deeply loves, computer models project that nearly 35 percent of the world’s arable land will ultimately be awash with tears as she calls out for her dear Emilio,” he continued.

The startling and strongly worded report was coauthored by dozens of prominent researchers, all of whom have reportedly charted the global impact of magical realist phenomena since the 1950s, when such events first began gaining international prominence with the mystical occurrences in the remote village of Milflores, Colombia, in which every woman became pregnant for 99 months and all of the men were struck with battle scars without ever having fought in any war.


According to Weber, the research team cataloged many locations and industries that have already suffered harm from a staggering escalation of such fantastical circumstances in recent years, citing in particular roving gypsy guitarists who, by strumming a single chord, plunge the daytime sky into night; vast orchards that suddenly bear cold-to-the-touch stones instead of lemons; and entire rural populations that could not speak for a year, but could only sing as beautiful birds. Specifically, U.N. officials warned of the widespread deterioration of residential structures caused by flurries of snow falling from bedroom ceilings whenever an old woman recalls the cold winter night on which she was deflowered so many years ago.

Furthermore, the report noted a startling increase in the number of infatuated young women who bake loaves of bread for their true loves and simultaneously cause the earth itself to rise beneath their feet, a geologic trend that has destroyed countless acres of farmland and buckled hundreds of bridges and roads, resulting in millions of dollars in damage.


“Consider how detrimental it is to a given economy’s labor force for its plantation overseers to disappear into the warm, midsummer fog, only to return decades later without having aged a single day—this is what we’re coping with in many localities every day,” Weber told reporters, noting that the recurrence of such wondrous events continues to have a volatile effect on the stability of the Argentine peso and the broader Latin American economy. “Furthermore, the loss of these fathers appears to lead directly to diminished education levels among a given household’s 19 sons, all of whom remain completely silent and whose piercing blue eyes fade to a dull amber until the day their beloved papá returns.”

While officials acknowledged that many of these dilemmas date back hundreds of years, to an age before the beginning of memory in which the coy earth underfoot had yet to reveal her secrets, the U.N. report presents a grave picture should such trends continue unchecked.


In particular, the report highlights the shifting regional borders, mass human migration, and continuous boiling of lakes and waterways caused by the spiteful internecine feud between the Víllánueva and De la Garza clans, recommending that international peacekeepers be deployed to suppress this violent, generations-old conflict that has caused the deaths of hundreds of sons on both sides, all of whose faces and bodies, when laid in their caskets, looked identical to that of their great-great-great-grandfather.

“Mexico is among the world’s chief contributors to the ongoing magical realist crisis, as it remains the country with the highest number of deceiving uncles whose visits to their extended families are presaged by strong, icy north winds in the middle of summer, which can damage infrastructure and sharply disrupt transcontinental weather patterns,” said U.N. analyst Alison Nguyen. “But many other countries are suffering as well, ranging from Venezuela, whose potable water supply diminishes every time a river dries up and leaves an impassable mountain range in its place, to Chile, where an entire state’s ecosystem was recently blighted by an ever-blossoming mango tree that grew thousands of feet into the clouds above the grave where Mama Rosita was buried.”


“We must act now, before the rainy season,” Nguyen added. “That’s when Mama Rosita’s temper always flared.”

Numerous experts have already identified the report’s findings as the most troubling since the U.N.’s post–World War II white paper on beat poetry, which found that mounting strife in the opium jungle could crown multiple third-world militia leaders the mighty Electric King, leaving all of us regal and none of us equal.