By Megumi Jindo

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Hastily jotted at night, during recent teenage angst, inspired by the winter season.

So here I am again,
suppressing my tears and hunger for love,
dark circles for sleep and angriness for
voidness of relationships

My tears are black 
and none left to cry

Where did they go?

Did they dry up
with all the boundless used ones?
Did they just stop coming
because they knew it wasn’t 
a sufficient way to know I was
what I was?

The rivers were once blue
for me: light and teal and bright
with life
but now
they’re black and dark and red
with nothing but space for you to fill
or maybe a void for tears
to come and drown in

I used to cry till my eyes went numb
and my lips, chapped and pink
but now they frost and steam with
condensation and malice; with cruelty
and sneers of contempt

It’s because you never treated me right,
taught me how to properly let my 
emotions rise and tears flow

It’s because you never hugged me tight enough 
that now I slip into the endless waters
hitting ground deep
running with fear
of you, behind my back—
chasing with thunder

The nights were once nice and soft
with teacups and warm hearths
but now they’re dim and
cold-hearted and every lid closes
with a thud—
it’s biting outside
and the snow hasn’t stopped and
the sky hasn’t lightened

But maybe one day,
when the tears start coming,
the love will resume
and all will be timed with your
erupting madness and butterflies of summer:
like it once was

So here I am again,
suppressing my tears and hunger for love,
dark circles for sleep and angriness for
voidness of relationships

My tears are black 
and none left to cry

Where did they go?

Did they dry up
with all the boundless used ones?
Did they just stop coming
because they knew it wasn’t 
a sufficient way to know I was
what I was?

The rivers were once blue
for me: light and teal and bright
with life
but now
they’re black and dark and red
with nothing but space for you to fill
or maybe a void for tears
to come and drown in

I used to cry till my eyes went numb
and my lips, chapped and pink
but now they frost and steam with
condensation and malice; with cruelty
and sneers of contempt

It’s because you never treated me right,
taught me how to properly let my 
emotions rise and tears flow

It’s because you never hugged me tight enough 
that now I slip into the endless waters
hitting ground deep
running with fear
of you, behind my back—
chasing with thunder

The nights were once nice and soft
with teacups and warm hearths
but now they’re dim and
cold-hearted and every lid closes
with a thud—
it’s biting outside
and the snow hasn’t stopped and
the sky hasn’t lightened

But maybe one day,
when the tears start coming,
the love will resume
and all will be timed with your
erupting madness and butterflies of summer:
like it once was

Process

I had a recent hardship and was inspired by the anime show, Chihayafuru, (which is based on Japanese Karuta: card games). The main character, Taichi, goes through a heartbreak, and suddenly all that he was doing and playing Karuta for (the person he loved) seemed for naught. The Karuta that he once loved because of that person, suddenly turned black for him, they lost color and cheerfulness.

Similarly, I imagined my own tears, which once came so easily but didn’t run down, during this hardship, to turn black tears, like the black cards; to symbolize how the things that were once flowable were now inhibited. That’s where “My tears are black/and none left to cry/Where did they go?” also comes from. I wanted to invoke an image of all the things that were once bright and content, now turned into anger and darkness, as can be seen in the second half of the poem. Also imagining fog rising out of a mouth amidst the snow in the cold, I was inspired to write “but now they frost and steam with/condensation and malice; with cruelty/and sneers of contempt”.

Overall, this poem which started off being written to relieve my angry emotions transformed into an exploration of using the winter season to illustrate my feelings.