Behind the Painted Smile

Each morning,

I rise to a war no one sees,

a battle that starts in the hush of the breeze.

The weight on my chest is a silence,

profound,

a storm in my mind that makes no outward sound.

I lace up my armor,

invisible steel,

pretending that numbness is something to heal.

A smile,

rehearsed,

stretches wide on my face,

concealing the void,

I can never replace.

The daylight insists I perform,

play my part,

while shadows keep clawing the walls of my heart.

Conversations are masks I am forced to create,

responses rehearsed,

so they don’t see the weight.

“I’m fine,”

I repeat,

though the truth is unkind,

a phrase that imprisons the ache in my mind.

For if I should whisper the depth of my pain,

would they turn away,

or just call it in vain?

The laughter I borrow feels hollow,

not mine,

yet still I arrange it in careful design.

Each chuckle,

each gesture,

a shield I have spun,

to hide from the world what the darkness has done.

But inside my thoughts,

where no witness can peer,

the battle is endless,

relentless,

severe.

Each doubt is a soldier,

each wound a refrain,

each step is a struggle to wade through the rain.

Yet still I keep moving,

though weary,

though worn,

though mornings feel heavier than nights that are torn.

For deep in the silence,

a flicker remains,

a spark that survives through the ache and the chains.

So I carry my sorrow,

both heavy and wide,

and mask it with smiles that I wear from inside.

For the world only sees what I choose to reveal,

never the scars that will never quite heal.

But maybe one day,

when the battle is done,

and shadows dissolve in the touch of the sun,

I’ll shed all the masks,

let the truth freely flow,

and stand in the light with the strength I now know.