smile


They tell you to smile.
Here's what they don't:
As you walk your miles of life
Giving in to your needs, not wants
Smiling a bit, in forceful habit
Like a stranger's eye contact panic,
Your face sheds it's innocence
Your skin, its brilliant softness
To give way to a skeleton's clothing
To make way for the desolation and loathing
For the world, and your role in it,
And your smile in its poor limits.

They tell you to smile
Here's what they don't:
Human faces grow sadder over the years
Time, faster, and without family, slower
Walking a daily struggle
Confined to your routine bubble,
looking up a body's disaster.

So walk in the streets
At 12 in the morning
To notice the sunshine
And the concrete warming
Notice the man looking at your feet
Too ashamed to face your face
Too ashamed to show his eyes
His tears he hides
And ask, once, in all honesty:
Would you like help, if you were right beside?

Smile
Written by Yash Raj Talan

[note to self: make a poor man's heart happy]


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