Heart, you softy, you sap--you're getting fat

Heart, you softy, you sap—you’re getting fat,

sniffling there in the dark

to hide the tears that well in your eyes,

hiding there on reddened rims

ready to spill over in the next sad

scene of a movie you paid too much to see,

sitting alone there, weeping to yourself

over a lover lost, endangered, needing rescue,

and rescued, lives happily ever after,

as you knew she would, knew they would,

predictable in an animated romance.

It’s a feel-good movie, worth the price

of admission just to sit in the dark and cry

for what happened or didn’t in the movie

of your own life, tears shed and running down

your cheeks, dark rivulets streaking your face,

older now and creased, but feeling young again

and full of the possibilities of what could

have been, might have been in a different movie,

another time, another place, another star-studded feature

flashing before your eyes, that reality here

for a couple of hours, softly crying unseen in the dark.