A smile that shelters in the dark

A smile that hides a thousand stories.

You hide behind it every day.

You want everyone around you to be happy.

You wouldn’t want them to worry.

Your pain is no one else’s.

It’s yours, and yours alone.

They might feel it sometimes, but that’s when you hide.

In times like those, you hide further.

You slowly fade away, you go into a place where it is darker and safer.

Where you don’t need to smile.

A place where no one can find you, because no one would imagine someone like you there.

How could they? You smile all day. You laugh, you sing, you entertain…

There’s no way that person has a dark side.

A side that no one would understand, even if they find you.

They’d laugh about it and so would you.

‘I’m just chilling…”, you’d say with a smile.

Nope, I’m not sitting here to unleash my dark side,

the side that wants to reimagine so much, be sad about it, and even cry.

The one behind that smile is the realest of them all.

That’s the one you want to be surrounded with,

the one who puts you all first for as long as it takes,

until the next sitting in the dark.

Where a thousand stories are finally unleashed,

and that smile can be at peace,

so that tomorrow, you all get to see it again, to feel better and think, “Oh, there she is, with that vibrant smile again.”