Two Faced

"How you doing? Alright?

That's great"

He smiles, brightly.

I force the corners

Of my horizontal mouth to

Curl up in reply,

And I walk on by.

There's no space for replies.





Actually,

I haven't been doing

Very well lately.

But he doesn't want

To know that.

That's not the answer

He wants to hear. So

My voice is taken,

My reply he is faking,

I force a smile, he

Cannot see behind.





When he turns away,

I pay, in compliments,

His smile forward. A mask

For the living nightmares,

Anxiety, stress, and longing

For a good nights sleep.

This is why they say

Teenagers are two faced.

They just don't know

What it really means.





I head up the stairs,

Towards his class,

I pick up a pencil,

And I try hard. Yet

All of a sudden, I'm

Really tired,

As if the world has drained

Me of everything I have.

I fall, I stumble, I blank,

Man down. He looks on

In wonder, blissfully naïve.

"You said you were okay"

I don't have the heart

To tell him that I said

Nothing, nothing at all.





Home again. Longing

For the hour when it's

Finally acceptable to

Close my eyes, and

Forget to feel.

They tell the doctor,

"She's so tired all the time"

But it's not true,

It's not because of a lack of sleep,

Or insomnia, or overload.

It's because of a longing

An addiction to forgetting,

Where no one has to pretend,

Like they don't feel

Numb.