One Fabulous Poem by Adi Raturi

 

The Weight of Tears

For the young boy,
whose ice cream fell off the cone,
they bear down like a monsoon rain,
dribble effortlessly down smooth, frictionless cheeks.

All of them light as feathers.

For the single mother,
coming home to this crying boy,
they are boulders, caked into the cliffside,
infused with grease and sweat,
held back only by the knowledge of the damage they can do.

Tears are often compared to streams or rivers,
flowing from endless chasms of the soul,
Yet, perhaps, they are sourced from a finite ocean
that’s boiling away in step
with the candle of mortality.

Cuts and burns may tip the pot,
but scars increase the flame,
sparing only the salt and grime
until water turns to sludge,
and feathers stiffen into stone.

Adi Raturi is a recent high school graduate who has won numerous gold keys and a national medal for fiction in the Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards. He has also written an abstract for his own research which was selected for presentation at the International Developmental Pediatrics Association Congress. He currently runs Intangible Literary Magazine.