A Smile

‘I’ll smile.

Don’t know what it takes to fool this town,

I’ll do it till the sun goes down and all through the night time.

I’ll tell you what you want to hear,

Keep my sunglasses on while I shed a tear,

It’s never the right time.’

-Sia (Unstoppable)

         Smiles.  We normally associate them with something genuine, sincere and honest.  But is that necessarily true? 

        He walked hand in hand with her.  Dark eyes looking into her light ones as though she were the only thing out there that actually mattered.  

She was his everything.  

I was his past. 

And my heart broke just a little more every time I saw them together.

It’s funny how the small tilt of one’s lips conveys one’s emotions so aptly.  Upwards denotes amusement, joy, perhaps even a feeling of gratitude.  Whereas downwards is associated with grief, sorrow and just about every negative emotion that comes to mind.

Perhaps this is true, but let us consider the moments when one’s mouth is curved upwards and the emotions associated with it are to be conveyed through a downward arc.

The moments when one’s smile is but a façade masking the raw feelings of hurt that lay shimmering right below the surface. 

Shimmering brightly, as though a pair of unshed tears.

He turned towards me, his eyes twinkling with a mixture of mirth and delight and I forced a smile upon my face.  It didn’t quite reach my eyes and if he’d looked just a bit up, into the confines of my irises, he would’ve known that it wasn’t genuine.

But the smile continued, even after he’d turned back towards the girl he now thought as his everything.  

The smile continued, even after my heart lay in pieces shattered on the tile floor, below.

‘The truth is never written on one’s lips, but in one’s eyes.’

The eye is quite literally the window to the soul.  And where one’s lips can always fake a laugh or a grin, one’s eyes cannot.

7 years later, and I stand in front of a door, ringing a bell I never thought I’d ring again.

I’m answered by a 6-year old girl holding a teacup set in one hand and a plastic wand in the other and the distinct call of someone yelling ‘the nanny has arrived,’ from a room nearby.

The sea is dotted with the light reflected off of shimmering waters.  

The calm of the blue is nothing but a trick of the light.  What rages far below are deep feelings of turmoil and hurt that are hidden well underneath a mask of tranquility. 

He walks in then, hand in hand with the girl who was his everything. 

 He thanks me for my time, gives me a small smile and then leaves with the women in toe, as the little girl continues to play with her tea set as though nothing has happened.  

He didn’t recognize me, I realize.  

He didn’t recognize me.

Sometimes, it is better to be forgotten, then forced to endure the pain of being remembered.  

A smile a day keeps the questions at bay.

But perhaps, someone’s questions to know whether one is alright, regardless of the fake barrier that has been put up in order to conceal one’s emotions, tells us who really cares and who really doesn’t. 

Hesitantly, I walk over to the little girl, enthusiastically playing with her makeshift kitchen.  

I pick up a miniature tea pot and begin to pour the imaginary tea.

Her eyes catch mine as she stares at me with a new profound admiration, smiling with a cheeky grin on her face.

She has his eyes, I notice.

I smile back.  

This time, it’s a genuine one.

A smile is not only about showing one’s own content, it can also be about reflecting someone else’s.