Wooden Smiles
-
wooden smiles and painted tears
behind this mask we hide our fears
-
'Just keep smiling.'
That is what I tell myself, over and over, even when I feel like my face will crack in two from the pain of holding this grin, finally revealing to them what I really feel beneath this plaster mask.
Some days I feel like I'm walking a line, a thin unsteady line that I can't fall off of, no matter how hard I try, though I weave dangerously as I walk it.
On one side there is the smile, the smile that I present to the world no matter how much I want to curl up into a ball and break apart, shatter, fall into the abyss that is my heart.
And on the other side is that abyss, the deep yawning abyss that hold everything I truly feel, holds everything that I hide every single day behind a wide, fearless, simple smile.
-
in solitude we walk this line
between reality and mind
-
I'm not perfect, though, no matter how hard I try to be. Not like that boy who is perfect—and never smiles.
Sometimes, I slip. Sometimes, a word or a phrase or a memory or an insult will slip between the cracks—because there are cracks—and for a moment, just a brief moment, this smile will falter, revealing for that small instant in time the pain and loneliness that hides beneath.
Sometimes I feel the emptiness that will fill my eyes, turning them so dark and fathomlessly deep.
They don't see. Or they do, and brush it off as inconsequential. And I do nothing to dissuade that, for I bounce back mere seconds later, grinning widely even when my soul is screaming and breaking inside.
-
porcelain hearts and empty eyes
we hide behind this mask of lies
-
I don't lie. Can't lie, won't lie. And this smile, it isn't a lie. Not really, not truly. I suppose it's what I might have been, had I not suffered the way I have.
They think it's the real me. They think I'm just a simple boy who knows nothing about the war that we fight, the pain that it causes; just another boy who smiles all the time because he doesn't realize that there's nothing to smile for.
I know that there's nothing to smile for. That's why I do it—because if I don't smile, who will? I'm the only one who can do it without breaking; who can smile and—sort of—mean it.
-
we sing of what we could have been
of happy memories and heartfelt grin
-
I have to keep smiling. Because if I stopped, then wouldn't I be just like them? Unable to be happy, unable to see the simple, joyous things in life, unable to pretend for even a moment that we aren't what we are—children who are fighting a war they should have had nothing to do with in the first place.
If I stop smiling, I'll become the emptiness that I can feel deep inside of me, waiting for its moment to pounce.
'Just keep smiling.'
—for what else can I do, but smile and pretend I'm something more than the nothing I'll always be?
-
broken façade and crumbling wall
without this mask, we're nothing at all
-
And here we go again; number four in the series. I'm just churning these out, aren't I? Yes, the poem contained in this story is mine—please don't steal it.
DISCLAIMER: I hold no claim to Gundam Wing or any related franchises. The idea, the plot, and the poem, however, belong to me.