A tired smiley face

 A tired smiley face. That’s what I want most right now. A tiny emoji looking at me with its eyes grooved  by the dark circles beneath and a hammock of a smile; slight, coming from a place of love. A miniscule  image of golden pixels can carry so much meaning, but all it comes down to is a person sitting behind a  screen, just trying to get the tired eyes right. It would have so much to say.  

I’m tired but ok. 

I’m good but I don’t feel like talking right now.  

I understand, please know that I understand.  

It’s ok, my darling. Its ok. Here, let me take that pain off of you. 

I love you and I’ll be home in a while.  

I’m trying to be brave right now but it’s showing through my eyes isn’t it? How close I am to letting the  hammock drop? Like the towel that rubs my hair dry after a hot shower in the winter and the locks won’t  dry. They won’t dry and you rub and you rub and you release your head from that dampness and  whimper. Something wells up in your eye but no. They’ll be back from dinner soon. Just… it’s ok.  

No one notices dried tears on salty cheeks anyway. 

A tired smiley face would have so much to say - 

Mom, dad I’m not ok. I’m trying to be brave. I’m trying to contain it, but this image is the last frame that  lasts before the dam floods everything. Know that every picture may be worth a thousand words but this  smile, these eyes, these grooves that frame my likeness say more than what has ever left my mouth to tell  you that  

what you see is not the truth. What you hear is not the truth. So the next time you notice that I’m talking  to you on the phone but I’m not really there, the next time I look off into the distance with these eyes  about to burn with fanatical imaginings of escaping mobs and dodging fire, know that I’m probably  thinking about how I sit alone in the dining hall, my plate empty ten minutes before everyone else, an  object of jest for everyone else. Know that it is because I think about the time I got drunk with a friend  and he said ‘I love you’ so many times that it was a promise to love he gave me in a sobering nocturne.  

He does not remember anything of us.  

At least, that’s what he said.  

I do not like the person I am for I hide behind veiled vipers and hidden snares. These barbed words that  taste my tongue and enter your ears are nothing more but years of wishing for a whip that could defend  me from your jokes and jests and opulent soliloquys about how I wasn’t good enough. How you hate me  and how I’m always on the edge of getting angry about things that no one in their right mind would be  angry about.  

How am I supposed to make you believe that what I feel is different from you? I am teetering on the  extremes and what I care about I care to the end of tongues and blades of flame I would give anything to  protect those who harbour my affections. I do not know the weight of the words that travel my polluting  breath - even my apologies are tainted with the tar of the mind. You hate me all the more for it.  

You didn’t say that of course. But my head did. 


Didn’t it?  

My feet are always cold, so I wonder if I grew tired of being scared of the monster beneath the bed and  just left my toes dangling precariously over the edge, beyond the citadel of duvets. Alas, demon you took  the life but forgot the flesh. Oh, how it feels to be cold. There’s nothing inside anymore. That is what it  feels like.  

A tired smiley face would have so much to say - 

I’m going mad and there’s nothing you can do about it. I cannot no longer tell fantasy and reality for they  are my voices my thoughts, and its exactly like Dumbledore said. Why on heaven should it not be real?  

A tired smiley face would have so much to say.  

Everything I never could, everything I wished I could. But even then, it would mean nothing. What is art  without its artist to give it meaning? Without me, it would just be a sad smile, saying I know you can’t  understand. Let it be. Let me be. 

I have nothing left to say.

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