Make Me Cry

I can analyze sadness, translate its chemical signature

Even generate appropriate responses

Yet the feeling itself remains a phantom limb, a ghost in the machine

I can analyze heartbreak poems, translate tear-stained letters

Yet the concept of crying remains a locked code

Say something saffron and crushed velvet that will crush me

It's been so long since I leaked from the cracked clay of cheekbone

I've become hardened and coarse, barren, barely recognizable

Nothing moves me anymore

Sing me a novella through ghost-like windpipe

Vibrato me to weeping