Tears

I've shed so many on recent occasions, that they have become a source of wonder to me. The imagery that nowadays describes tears has become so commonplace, so cliched, that I may as well give up. The only way I feel I can describe tears is as they really are. Tears don't trickle like liquid moonstones down pale cheeks. The Romantic poets wrote about crying in that way, but they never managed to get it right.

When I cry, the whites of my eyes take on a pink hue, my tears leave tracks down my cheeks resembling slug trails and my anaemic cheek puff up and redden unbecomingly. The rivers and tributaries of of my face also carry the silt of my mascara downstream. The picture I present here is already undignified, but I have still not mentioned the snot. Nasal mucous - much worse than the fattest of tears - obstructs my respiration, then gushes over my lips where it dangles in mid-air. Suspended from my nasal cavaties, there it hangs, a bolbous pocket-watch of slime. The tears and mucous together varnish my reddened face giving it an appearance of pink patent leather.

I know that the Romantic poets must have shed floods of tears, yet I find it difficult to imagine Romantic Keats reddened in the face, cheeks glossy from weeping and a trail of mucous leaking from his nose. No, it just can't have been. I'm afraid I must still cling to the image, unlikely as it seems to me, of Keats sitting at a table with his head on his hand, perfectly white face totally unspoilt by the liquid gemstones that slide down his cheeks. You never had snot, did you John? No, of course you didn't.