Smiles

For years you fixed so many smiles by giving people beautiful pearly white teeth all line up straight.

You made people feel better about themselves with just a few instruments and toothpaste.

But, what about your child's smile? What about my smile?

My smile, which should have been one the most real and brightest of all was, for so many years, the most fictitious.

And what about your smile? Yours was even more fraudulent than mine.

My smile always seemed so kind but nothing could be further from the truth.

My smile hid so much pain and worry that I let no one see.

My smile would fade at night as I heard you yell, and my brother's bunk beds shake in the room next door.

I would hide beneath my covers quietly as a mouse being the perfect daughter I was supposed to be.

Then, just as it did every day, the sun would rise and there was my smile.

There was your happy cheerful daughter ready to take on the world with her fake smile.

Even after you held a gun to my mother's head, I went on with my life wearing my smile.

When friends asked how I was, I would always flash those pearly whites and say, "I'm great!"

I was always the perfect little student and the perfect little daughter, always with a smile on my face.

Then there was you father, with your smile that was just as fake as mine.

You would sit so pious on the altar all holy and pompous.

One hand held the bible while the other was balled in a fist.

You would preach the good word but practiced none of it!

You would tell others to follow Christ, yet you had wandered so far from him.

Your smile fooled so many people and still does to this day.

If only they knew that the man who fixed so many smiles had the most broken one of all!

The most perfect smile of all was nothing more than a lie.