I love you.

How deceiving smiles can be.

All the pain that’s hidden underneath.

All the words tucked into all the tiny nooks and crannies.

Hiding from the pain and the shame, they roll around and around in a chaotic dance of regret and desperation.

Swirling and twirling in and out of all the dark spaces, drifting in and around, caressing every empty space between your teeth and your gums that lay there;

Red.

Dark red, perfectly lining your glistening white teeth.

Quietly bleeding,

Bleeding from the pain.

The pain of stifled words and unspoken feelings,

Silently bleeding like the energy draining out of your perfect, beautiful, worthy soul.

Draining because you are dying.

Dying to be heard and wanting to be yearned for.

Stood for, appreciated and wanting to do more.

But maybe not knowing how.

Or not knowing how to ask for help.

Or not knowing you deserve help.

Yes, you do.

The words stay caught there in a loop

An abusive, sickening loop.

Until it’s repeated enough to be engraved in all the slender crevices of your mind.

Dissolving it away like water to rice paper.

Until there’s nothing left but the words.

Harsh, cold and heavy.

Weighing your psyche down like cinder blocks molded on the ankles of misfits cast away into the oceans because someone decided they don’t belong.

That they weren’t worthy enough of life or love or companionship.

Snuffed out.

Never to be found.

Sunken down deep into the waters where it gets stuck.

Entangled in sea moss plump and lush with long confusing fingers pulling at your insecurities and rummaging through all your baggage.

Poking around, intentionally finding the sore spots.

The spots that should’ve broken you but failed.

The ones that should’ve beaten you down and drowned you way before now.

Before this.

Your breaking point.

And all the courage it took to get you there to that awful place.

The lowest place you’ve ever been.

But you survived,

You rose up

and overcome

Again.

But you can never let them know, so you conceal them.

Hide them well behind that infectious smile.

The mask holding firm your facade.

Gracefully propped in plain sight to offset the murky mess of overflowing thoughts and emotions spewing out of every cell.

& it works.

Unfortunately too well.

You see, the words need to be noticed,

They need to be felt, loved, heard and understood.

They can be warmed by the love of someone that cares,

True, pure intentions melt the icy words sunk deep into the hearts and minds of the misunderstood.

So that they can flow again.

Like the rush of a newly thawed river enriching all that it touches, the freed words could sing life into the world once more.

We need to take a second to notice

Really pay attention to friends.

Your family, your cousins, your loved ones, even that random guy at the gym.

You won't know it’s too late to tell them all the things that your smile hides.

It could be the talk that saves them.

So send it.

A message.

A phone call.

A poem.