How much do I weigh in un-cried tears?
Do they show in an x-ray?
Do they cause cancer?
Sometimes they ache, a large mass in my chest.
I had no idea I was hauling around tears.
I didn’t know to feel their incremental gain.
I didn’t hear them slosh from side to side
when I rolled over.
I learned this in my lover’s arms.
Powerful arms—pale and cool.
He taught me to open screaming, bleeding parts of me—
un-named parts and unfelt hurts.
He touched fine hairs down my ear canal and drew saltwater.
His chest opened to the floods
and he helped label the dusty boxes of memories
crammed into the rafters of my heart.
Intensity was his mainstay; he drew mine.
We would strip away the world
and became so vulnerable.
These times felt rich and real.
When I felt seen in his eyes, I knew I’d not been seen before.
This is what I’d lacked most; this is what I wanted most.
It pricked a new, insatiable hunger.
This was chocolate for my soul.
One morning, he ran his hand across my chest.
As it slowed, the last two fingers
brushed a bubble of sadness
affixed to my ribcage.
I pressed his fingers and the sac emptied through my eyes.
The world stood still as my face flooded again and again.
It was done. That file of hurt was deleted:
un-opened, unread, released.