I think a smile on my face is the best compensation I can offer myself. It’s supposed to cure any kind of pain. Which is ironic when my lips stretch wide and my wrinkles open up and my eyes go dim, I want to laugh at the thought of such effectiveness but that would hurt even more. Nowadays a smile may not be entirely genuine, or reflective of the emotion I bear eternally. As days like these are always the ones that stick with me, but not all of them.... fortunately, enough.

    From what I can remember, I can recall days of having pale clouds drizzling rain over
me. Soaking my shoes, splashing puddles as I sprinted past outlandish looks, the sunlight
banished for the day, giving me melancholic delight. Nurtured to health and happiness, My head softly caressed when drowning in my own contemporary sorrow, the lower back of my head was always my ticklish spot, and my mother knew that to get a rise out of me. Feeling one step closer to the future from my optimistic enthusiasm of conquering the world.... having no cares in the world, yet its constant tumbling slowly dawned on me with age.

    These days the pouring storms feel a little colder and harsh, hiding away is the best bliss I can resort to cause of it. She can hold my hand as tightly as she’d like and brush the tangled locks in my hair, yet my health and happiness have hardly reachable limits in what could be nurturing at this point, I just wonder if any of it is fair to her? My footsteps have grown larger but so has the destination toward my optimism, I just don’t know if I will reach it, or if it can be taken from me, or if I could be taken from it. Piecing together the world feels like a soothing daydream the closer I look at it.

    Hopefully, a smile is what a need is, a stretched, forceful, aching, smile. Blowing air from my nose hearing a moderately funny joke, a sense of glee picking up a new book I had to scrape a few dollars for, thankful nourishment drinking water from a bottle to only end up in a sea of plastic, a smile to feel.... happy?