Are you getting enough sleep?
By Stacks Poets
Published 1 January 2021
by Melanie Cunningham
Are you getting enough sleep?
Can I leave you to cry?
Tell me what are you thinking when you go red in the face with tears? Does it hurt? Do you think I will leave you? Can you see
my heartache as I walk out of the room? (they tell me I have to)
Just minutes later that seem like hours, you
Are angelic, a porcelain face with perfectly delicate eyelashes
Serene and peaceful with one glistening tear runnel down your skin to your ear
Sweet tiny measurements of pink breath
in and out, in and out.
Are you damaged from the crying?
Does each tear channel carve a groove deeper and deeper
As a canyon is formed somewhere below consciousness, to be a later threat?
I fear
A gorge of emptiness, a stony wind of abandonment pushing grit along
Towering steep sides from which you could one day fall.
My little precious precious
An imaginary row of worry dolls pinned to my chest
Hover between my heart and you
Again, my fingers brush them, their crude dress, their wooden faces
Unnerving reassurance, never assured.
Exercise - Construct a list of poems from a range of worries - worries that might be typical;worries that are crazy, invented.