Echoes Beneath the Smile

We smiled once, we laughed — the world spun golden for a breath, and we pretended not to care. Now, we smile still, but it’s painted on — a porcelain mask, fragile beneath the light. We are kind, and soft-spoken, polite as petals — but hollow at the core. We laugh, an echo, empty and rehearsed. Did we care? Did you? Because I didn’t. I smiled to keep from breaking, laughed to hide the cracks, played “okay” while the silence inside me screamed for a better day, a better life — one that never came. And when I am gone, when even my shadow forgets my name, my smile and laugh will linger — small ghosts of who I was, carried softly in the dust of this earth.