Artificial Tears

​     Yeon Myung-ji

​Spring, when unsent text messages bloom into cherry blossoms.
Sentences I want to press down and write; sitting in the flower shade, I cannot read the lines of that day and feel motion sickness.

​Hidden matters remain deep in the sea for a long time,
and the hurried footsteps that used to call “Mom” no longer open the door.

The end of April reaches the sea and begins to gather cold tears,
and deep shoulders come leaning in as dusk falls.

Because tears would not return, I put artificial tears in my pocket
and sat for a long time beneath the cherry tree dropping its petals.
In front of a young mother snapping photos while exclaiming “How pretty, how pretty,”a girl sitting in a wheelchair is smiling faintly.

​Eyes indifferent to falling things,
caught red-handed by the dazzlingly beautiful scenery,
make the white, scattering cherry blossoms sob.

​Lingering long beside the people of spring overflowing with vitality, I dried the wet eyes inside my eyelids.

​Rustle inside the flower petals, artificial tears spill chillingly.

Biography

​Yeon Myung-ji holds a Master’s degree in Social Welfare. She made her literary debut in 2013 with her poetry collection 『Gasibi』 through the Minerva Poetry Series.
She is the author of the poetry collections 『Sitting Like an Apple 』and 『Where Is the House of the Word “Sorry”?』, as well as the e-poetry collection『 Seventeen Miss Marco Polos』 and the travel essay collection 『Walking Step by Step to Santiago』
She has been honored with Grand Prizes at the Tolstoy Literary Award, the Homi Literary Award, the Cheongsong Gaekju Literary Award, the Aviation Literary Award, and the Kim Myeong-bae Literary Award, as well as the Bronze Prize in Poetry at the 2025 Literary Asia Awards.

​Her poems have been published in literary journals and media across numerous countries, including India, Pakistan, Kosovo, Italy, Egypt, Spain, the United States, Belgium, Greece, Iraq, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France.