I’ve forgotten how to smile.

It comes with too joyful a childhood that your muscles get cramped, 

and it’s much easier just to loosen the upward tension.

My face can fall without a crushing force, like weary bricks,

liberated from upholding their sorry facade. 

For once, I’m allowed to break,

to scream to the point where I deafen myself and others, a perfect deliverance.

I’ve forgotten how to smile.

Though I can still wear a mask, a manicured smile, a mockery to the ravenous monster within.

The nude lipstick holds it in place: a perfect lady, a dainty doll, neither of which I am.

A toothy grin that daunts the camera. I stopped when I was a girl but thirteen.

Happiness was frivolity; composure was poise.

I knew whom I wanted to be perceived as and made my choice.

I’ve forgotten how to smile.

How do you expect me to when you’re not, and you’ve welcomed the spirit of division

to work between you and me? As it was meant to be.

I vainly fly for the canopy, out of your gloom, for the sky, to breathe,

but you grasped onto my heel and pulled me down to be the treasure in your coffin.

And you wonder why I’ve changed.

My fake smiles were gone, replaced with scowls and bristlings.

I’ve forgotten how to smile.

When you, careless and reckless, waltz with death;

When you, selfish and heartless, break me and mom like we can be patched up later.

Ever since you cut yourself, bled your knuckles,

And struck yourself with that stupid rubber band.

Ever since you didn’t stop at the edge of the roof, the middle of the road.

I sometimes find myself imagining a smile, but I refuse to cheat myself, 

not when bleak reality awaited after each dream.

I’ve forgotten how to smile.

When my life is no longer my own, but a template for you to copy and use at your whim.

I see two “me”s, except one is an impostor.

Who am I? A daughter, a friend, a dream seeker, a student, who had a future, an ambition to chase, a world to conquer,

Yet you cast yourself in the same mold. 

You stuck yourself on my road as a shameless block,

Daring me to remove the rock. 

Since you’ve asked, why not?

I hate those who cry.

Tears became their favorite defense, against their own depraved mind.

A sob, a sniffle, a welling of moisture seek to incriminate.

By default, those who rein in their tears, hence the villain.

How could you retract your tears as easily as you’ve released them? 

You weep by copious amounts, yet you weep for but seconds, 

so who’d believe that you were truly heartbroken? 

Still, it takes but one. And then you are the poor girl bullied and I the bully.

I hate those who cry.

Powerless to accept a duel of honor, no surprise.

How is it that weakness could gather supporters wherever they went?

Their vulnerability performance requires but an actor’s control,

A hacker’s ease to photoshop yourself onto the victim card and flaunt it around, 

sentencing your dissenters so that they are the prisoners dragged out into the courtyard.

So that I was the prisoner flogged for a kind word of remonstration.

Sadly, the first time was but a mild demonstration.

I hate those who cry.

Just because they are the ones riddled with bullet holes, bent down by the lack of strongholds.

They let their tears run from a trickle into a deluge and propel

those waves to the gates of their supposed enemies,

for if their fortifications can’t withhold the ugly emotions that they detest while they manifest,

no one can.

If they were the flood’s first victims, then they must drag others to join them in the under.

I hate those who cry.

Eyes crinkled, nose scrunched and lips warped into hysterics.

Graceless, controlless, poiseless, without a grown man’s restraint even for their own organs.

Their honors wash away; their decencies are caught in the tides.

At the end of the day, you’ve stirred up the same urges in me:

not to cry, but to point my finger and speak those allegations that you’ve more than deserved.

The satisfaction afterwards make me understand why you use it as a common tactic,

and why it has become a habit.

I hate those who cry.

Especially when you use your breakdowns to judge me.

Your absurd accusations—that I got angry, that I yelled at you, 

that I was the one who rattled your nerves, that I made you live in fear—

lack any evidence, but your tears make up the ethos and pathos

And Mom can’t always be an impartial judge,

especially when you are the sick daughter for the last forty-eight months.

Once you’ve painted the picture you’ve so desired, it’s hard to get out of her or my brain.

Smiles and tears—

What do they essentially mean? Does it matter if I often lack both?

They sure do not indicate happiness or sadness, for men aren’t honest souls.

They can smile a million sunshines and still weep within.

They can weep for hours just as a more respectable outlet for their repulsive wrath.

I smile; I cry. Sometimes; sometimes not.

What does it mean? Nothing, nothing at all.

Though it is meaningless,

I still have a fancy for what I’ve forgotten, not what I’ve grown to hate.

I still wish to see myself smile. I still wish to see you smile.