Are you getting enough sleep?

by Melanie Cunningham

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.