The tear collector

The first time you saw me cry
was in the Italian restaurant
in Tunbridge Wells
not the one which was
owned by the man
with the aggressive speech impediment
who bullied your brother at school
the other one

You plucked the tears
from my cheeks with a pair of
entomologist's tweezers
as if they were rare Amazonian spiders
and placed them into
an album of
individually labeled
green plastic sleeves

"This is the third"
you said
holding the glimmering pustule of liquid
up to the light
"it is a remnant
from the night
your father died,
when the Rabbi tried to take your hand
and you pulled it away."

"This is the seventeenth"
you said
waving the tweezers
under my nose
"it is the colour of betrayal
and will be shed in the future
on the day you discover
that you have built
your life
on foundations
of cruelty and petulance.
It also shows you have a slight wheat intolerance"

"This is the thirty sixth and last"
you whispered,
placing what appeared to be
a shard of amethyst
into the palm of my hand
"this is for today - for the first step of a thousand mile journey.
It is the same journey your father took
and his father before him
and it will lead you
back to me"

You closed the album and hugged it to your chest
with proprietorial
ardour

To you, this was all just business