Something I wrote about a year back
Her smiles were honest, but they were smiles of defeat.
They were smiles so sad I always wanted to cry.
The first question people usually ask is how she died.
I tell them what the strangers told me, that it was quick and painless.
I know this is a lie.
She may have torn the band-aid off quickly, but she’d had the sore for a long time.
What she lacked in brains and softness and well-deserved love,
she made up for with courage and impulsiveness and brazen charm.
People like her live sweet and die young, or so the strangers say.
Still I linger on, and what I lack in her,
I make up for with tears and sullen stares and drawings in window fog.
I don’t think I’m playing my part quite right in her meticulously planned, sickeningly sweet escape.
I know soon she’ll come to me and click her tongue and ruffle my hair.
“Why the tears, little lady?” She’ll say to me,
“I thought you were a lion.”
I wonder why no one rescued her.
She never hid cries behind sugarcoated promises.
She never thought she’d be saved at all.
It’s people like her that need loving the most.
