Water Sculptor

by Oonah V Joslin

I’m more than sixty percent water.

Wet the bed as a child.

I’m forever dissolving into tears. Wake

up crying sometimes in my dreams.

I have more tear ducts than

the average bear. It’s called Blepharitis,

red eye. I call it unfair.

I’m dreading a leaky old age.

Emotions are sculpted from sensitive water.

Happy, sad, fearful, empathetic, nostalgic, goodbyes;

face scrunching, air gulping, gut twisting

tears roll off my production line

easily, like – like they’re just – nothing,

like they don’t hurt a bit.

I’m afraid that’s how I am.

That’s how she is, they say.

Everybody accepts ‘upset’ as my norm,

except for me. I hate this

excessive, lacrimal side-show, me. I

detest hearts worn on sleeves.

And if my isolation’s self-imposed,

I avoid situations so nobody knows

I’m more than sixty percent water

and I’m not waving. I’m drowning.

So – Have you nothing better to do

than gawp?!

* * * * *

Oonah V Joslin is poetry editor at The Linnet’s Wings. She has won prizes for both poetry and micro-fiction. Her book Three Pounds of Cells ISBN: 13: 978-1535486491 is available online from Linnet’s Wings Press and you can see and hear Oonah read in this National Trust video. The first part of her novella A Genie in a Jam is serialised at Bewildering Stories, along with a large body of her work (see Bibliography). You can follow Oonah on Facebook or at Parallel Oonahverse https://oovj.wordpress.com/.