"Listen to elders"
I always hear here and there
"Even fools grow old"

she casts her pencil like a wand as magic soaks into the page her flannel cascades around her work, shielding it from curious eyes she tilts her head to listen to the lecture, but her heart is elsewhere running through castles and stumbling through candle lit streets colors tangle to mirror the expanse of her dreams she shares her soul with every meticulous stroke each face blessed by her style but never the same when she designs she never aims for perfection for she knows perfect is just a fancy way of saying flawed she erases and redraws as if her art could never satisfy her desires it can always be better but it is never good enough if only she knew I meant it when I told her I loved her drawing her art speaks to me like Mona Lisa never could

O' Salty tear, a mere clear drop you are
You've emerged for a million different reasons
many of which only the shedder knows
for you've emerged in all seasons.

The season of sadness or reason of joy
The tears of grief and the tears of joy
You and your unalloyed saline taste
Thou art' but an emotional waste.

O' Salty tear each time you drop into oblivion
why not vanish away with your shedder's grief?
I tell you O' tear if you take my opinion
oughtn't you grant your shedder full relief?

Ah, but thou seem a ceaseless ocean in reserve and store
No one can be sure, he'll cry no more
When you trickle down those sad upturned lips
we know destiny perhaps made those painful slips!

You are the raindrops of a grief-clouded heart
You do emerge when two lovers have to part

Help your shedder turn over a new leaf
so you're associated less with grief.

I've watched many a jilted lover
weep all alone by the seaside so sorrowfully
and watched tears glide down noses or pince-nez
as their salty tears merged with the salty sea.

O' Salty tear but it's time you learnt to wash away
all and any melancholy from your shedder's heart
and be such a buddy who never wishes to meet again
the tearful shedder from whom you depart

having done nothing to deserve life
- Am astonished by creation

Only within darkness
Can our truth shine
Behold we are the candle