I was crying and sometimes when you cry, it’s like a spring in a desert. The water comes out of your eyes but there’s no noise, no flush of red. Your face stays looking vacant. The same shade. As though just a process. The way you see elephants cry.
Made me start thinking about crying.
What ‘makes’ a cry?
Did you know, Natalie Wood’s mother famously tore the wings from a live butterfly in front of seven year old Natalie to get the cry established during an audition.
Is it the water, redness, expression or sounds that constitutes a cry? What’s the most important factor?
This led me to thinking about my old ‘Tiny Tears’ doll, which is my first poem here. I was contemplating the way a generation of girls were encouraged to fill her with water to make her cry, like a game.
And how, when you think about it, that’s a little bit sick isn’t it?
Was it teaching empathy or cultivating the opposite?
Tiny Tears
“She cries real tears”
It said on the box
So I made her cry
Often
For my entertainment
I admit,
I took pleasure
In seeing those big blue eyes fill
Watching tears stream down her cheeks
I enjoyed her helplessness
Being the one to make it better,
Comfort her.
Only to set her off again
Whenever I wanted.
That was the game, see.
She was just a toy.
And I was a little girl
.
I grew up and realised
There are adults
Who also play this game
But not with dolls
And not with water.
Still think
She is just a toy.
“She cries real tears”
Middle Age
.
Is it middle age itself
That makes me feel so frayed?
Or is that I’ve caged myself?
A homemade barricade
Sharp teeth of life forget their point
Obedient crushed pearls
Each hour a sore, a worming wound
Slow clotting gape of sour
Tasting days, lukewarm malaise
Boiled sweets to suck and swallow
Lozenge storms of mundane harm
Then do the same tomorrow
And some lodge hard, within my throat
Lead bullets from my captor
Come close to choking on their bleak
And there, I’ll end this chapter.
.
She wanted to be….
She wanted to be his diamond.
Freed from years of pressure
Picked clean of dirt.
To sparkle
Be prized
.
Wanted to be his pearl.
Retrieved from rock bottom
Resurface, a treasure
Precious
Her moon sheen coax rainbows from his sun.
Be more than a shell.
.
She wanted to be his gold.
The weight of her worth, heavy in his hand
Her value honoured.
Never let go of.
Protected.
.
She wanted to be his….
Winter coat
North star
Library
Long bath
Fast car
Wildest dream
Beautiful show girl
Challenge
Vista
Easy chair
Saturday night
Sunday morning
Birthday
First kiss
Swan
Everything
.
But only ever as who she was
She had no desire
To become anyone else.
Above all else,
She wanted to be herself
Dead Rose
I had a rose that smelled of you
A storybook of red
Held it so tight with all my might
Til one day, it was dead
Could not revive the lustre
Lose my future to its whorl
As remnants scattered on the ground
A crushing truth unfurled
Our summer gone, life had moved on
All fairytales must end
I scooped each petal up with love
And cast them to fair wind
It left a stain upon my palm
A bruising shade of wine
The weeping of that stifled bud
Is now, forever mine.
Someone once said to me that if we didn't experience the bad things in life we wouldn't appreciate the good as much. I have found that to be true, that life is made by contrast. You have the capacity to see joy and light in the world around you, to explore truths and the meaning in experience. That's a gift you have and it brings joy to others. Thank you for that and for these poems. x
You write such stirring, beautifully written, observational poems Julie. The pictures of the elephant eye reminded me of a wonderful novel called “Leaving Time” by Jodie Picoult, a story woven around an elephant sanctuary showing the complexity of elephant society and how they grieve on a human level when they lose members of their herd.
It made me cry when reading it and touched my soul, similar to your poems. Are you published so others can enjoy them too?
Maddie