Tear Poem by Emma Atkinson

Cold.
Drops of rain on my sunglasses,
Grey tears the sky's, not mine.
My eye sockets have run dry beneath my lashes.
My throat is a road untraversed by many,
Known only by few,
Rough as the concrete
I walk with aching feet.
The remains of my tears
Stick to the walls like blackened tar,
Slick, salty, abandon like a dead man's house.
Silence falls,
Unloved, forgotten, despised,
Not by many, but by one:
Self.
That self that swallows darkness as if it were a drug
To make me sleep.
Sleep...I haven't in so long.
I have forgotten how to rest,
How to crumble in the safety of flesh.
My face has been turned to stone,
Unflinching against the corruption of time,
Numb as the first pebble falls,
Numb as the first crack appears,
Searing a line down my cheek
As if it were fire,
Neither hot nor cold, onlythe sting that follows
When feeling for so long has been lost.