A Minor Scientific Revelation

in poetry form

Photo by Scandinavian Biolabs on Unsplash

It continually perplexes me
how I can be lying down
and the bottom eye closer
to the pillow
tears up
but the further one
dries up

but actually
as I write this
and spend 0.5 seconds
to think about this
for the first time
in my life,
I realize I have the answer:

tear ducts and gravity.

The bottom eye never drains
into my tear ducts,
instead tearing up
and shedding those tears
on to my pillow.

The top eye only drains into my tear ducts,
perhaps a little faster than normal
because of how my head is tilted
so that the tears are dragged by gravity
straight into the drain
rather than resting comfortably
and being re-spread around my eyeballs
with my eyelids.