MUSINGS OF A SOLIVAGANT

Why Do You Smile?

Whom are you texting?

'Innervation of the hand...'
I look at the line typed on my search bar,
Look back at them
Close my screen and drop the phone.

Why are you smiling and texting?

I blink in surprise
Once... Twice... Thrice...
And look at the half typed poem
Sitting innocently on my screen.
I look back at them,
'Nothing'
And resume my work... typing...

Why are you smiling always?

I jolt out of the song I am humming.
Why do I smile always?
I smile because I try to keep the worry off,
I smile because I don't want to be
An emotional burden of nothingness,
That you need to shoulder,
On top of your own problems.

Yes I don't show you my anxiety,
Or the tears ripping me apart,
Or the sadness churning my insides,
Or the emptiness of the void in me.
I smile because I try to stay calm.
I smile because that's my way
To drown out the world full of anxiety.

Did you talk to the toppers?
Ask them tricks?

I sigh...
No I am not friends with a lot of them.

Oh why would you be friends
With people that can help you get ahead?
You'll go text people that never,
Will matter to anything to boost your career.
They say...

But they're my friends...
I love them and...
My voice is drowned out in rebuke.

I'm just an average student
Struggling to cope up with,
Expectations that rise so high,
That my neck pains to look up to them.

'See I wrote a new poem... I...'
Pay attention to studies.
'This is just a new design...'
Which won't get you anywhere in life.
'This drawing it took time and...'
Always wasting time...
Time...
I don't need the time that hurts.
I do these to escape that very time.

Why do you smile all day?
Are you even normal?
This texting is an addiction.
You're gonna be a mental patient soon..

And the voices are drowned out in suppressed tears,
Until my eyes are hot and dry.
Yet I just sniff into my pillow,
Or cry in the shower,
Where nobody could see these unbidden tears.
The feeling of being unwanted.
I'm just another piece of no one.
I'm a no one and yet...
I say I'm positive.
I've not lost yet.

I smile because positivity isn't a confetti,
That blows out of you.
Positivity hides somewhere in the back of your mind,
Burning steadily against all odds.
The feelings and dampening emotions,
Can't reach its depth.

I say again.
I SMILE because I have the RIGHT to.