Why We Watch Sad Movies Poem by Tara Teeling

A thousand cloudy Sundays have been spent
mourning the deaths of the imaginary,
which, though suspiciously lacking the
wetness and stench of an actual finish,
bring out one’s deepest anguish and props it up,
like a head on a stick.

All the pretty tragedies tend to come on slowly,
artfully flirting as a swell of smooth, black sleep
will do with the weakened and red-eyed.
What is inevitable teeters on the edge of happening
and the drama that leads it hints at a kind of divinity
that never spreads thin: sorrow, the one-size-fits-all
kind of condition that feels like cashmere on
cold, goose-fleshed arms; everyone can afford it.

Despair is pulled up through the throat;
an invisible fist reaches down into the depths,
grabs on to what is pumping or swollen,
and pulls it up slowly, scraping the
walls, like jagged nails running along
a silk-draped pillow.

Then, surrender slithers through the eyes,
through the nose, and when the death is done,
the illusion left to gather rot in its fantastical limbs and torso,
the observer will look about meekly to see if
they’ve been caught grieving for invention.

There is perversion in the doleful hysterics
but this is the appeal; it is a bit of
coquettish dancing with a blank-faced partner,
a sweet and sour canapé to chew on.
It is an opportunity to find romance in the unthinkable and
to convince ourselves that disasters are dusted with poetry.

No one is unprepared when the screen goes black.