My Thoughts In Poetry

Painting

The perfection, the perfect practiced smile I wear. It's as though someone painted my smile on years ago, using my face as their blank canvas.

Those eyes, always brimming with tears, hidden behind the fake happiness drawn. If you look close enough you can see that the painting of those perfectly happy portraying eyes have secrets that lie deep within. Underneath that expensive paint used to mask the imperfections, are scratches on the canvas, scratches, rips and tears.

Moving lower to the cheeks, always flushed with a pink. That perfect pink color that blends with the painted skin so perfectly, you almost ignore it. You almost ignore the scar running down the left cheek, how beautifully it runs across my cheek.

My lips, how they're chapped and cracked. They smile that perfectly painted smile, a frown faded beneath it. Oh, how the corners of my mouth tug up painfully, ripping at my heart.

And yet the perfection of this painting was not painted by any one artist, it was painted by many, first destroyed and then rebuilt to perfection, a perfection they wanted to see.

Rosa Vazquez.