Gold Medal from New York Literary Magazine

THE TEAR-CATCHER

The salt-taste of my tears

bears memories buried

in the corolla of a rose,

in the odours of my childhood

as I barely wake from a dream

to find our tryst abandoned.

Vigilant, always alert,

like a dolphin, I offer you

my tears, frangible as glass,

witnesses of a deep sea-birth,

witnesses carrying the immensity

of the sea within my eyes.