POEM - PARADISE

Dearest Dear

Dearest Dear,

What ever happened to all your smiles?

Are they hidden under the covers
where you cried yourself to sleep each night
or tucked in the corners of the stories
you read to try and distract yourself
from the depressing reality?

Are they stuffed in cracks and holes
in the paths you walk along each day
or folded neatly away
in the back of your closet?

Did you accidentally toss them out
with the recycling each week
or mistake them for someone else's
and give them away?

I know smiles are like pennies
just lying on the ground
waiting for you to pick them up,
but are you even looking?

Have you seen them
and just walked on by without stopping?

And what of you laughter?

Has that also disappeared?

Is it stored in bottles
in the back of your pantry?

Is it locked up in a music box you never open?

Did you know that laughter
is the music of the soul?
Or that, to heal a soul,
all you need is a genuine smile?

Did you know?

Do you even care?

Do you care that your heart gets heavier
with each passing day
you spend without happiness?
Do you even care
that you fall deeper and deeper
into depression with each tear you cry?

Do you care
that help is sitting right next to you
but you refuse to acknowledge it?

Or it is it that you can't see it,
can't recognize it sitting there?
Are you being blinded by the sorrow
so that you can't feel yourself falling,

falling down into a darkness you can't ever leave?
Are you lying to yourself,
saying everything is fine,
saying everything is "good"

when it's actually the opposite?
Why?

Why are you doing this?
Why?

Why can't you just open your eyes
and accept the happiness
that's right in front of you?
Why can't you
just take off all those masks you wear
and put on a smile?
Even if it feels weird,
even if it feels wrong,
that smile will do you more good
than any number of masks.
Please.

Please do it.
Just once is all I ask.
Do it for me?
Do it for yourself?
Do it for that "you"
you wish to be.
Do it for that happy "you"
you used to see
looking back at you through to mirror.
Please.

Let me see your smile once again.
Let me hear your laugh in the wind.
Please.

-The One who misses you
J.T