• Teach me how to smile. I don’t remember how. I know you can teach me because you smile all the time. I used to smile too. I don’t know why but I can’t bring myself to smile now. It seems pointless. It’s not that I don’t want to smile, I used to love smiling. But now…

    I haven’t seen your smile in so long. I think that’s why I can’t smile when I try. I used to smile when I was happy, but when I couldn’t see your smile, I couldn’t be happy. I hadn’t seen your smile in so long that I forgot how it looked. So please teach me again, how to smile.

    No, it’s not the physical smile that I need to be taught. It’s what a smile means. I can try to smile, but it would just be a gesture. All I’d be doing is showing my teeth. I know a smile shouldn’t just be a gesture, but mine doesn’t have any purpose. It’s an empty smile, it’s been hollowed out, just like my hollow heart.

    I could smile to show people that I’m happy, but then it would be even less than a gesture. It would be a mask. A smile could hide all the emptiness that I feel, but it wouldn’t hide it from me. You too can see the emptiness that’s in my smile. You’re the one that I want to show most that my smile isn’t empty.

    What happened to your smile? Why can’t you show me now? Help me see what it means to smile so that I can show you that I’m happy. I was always happy when you smiled. But now…

    Maybe a smile is just a gesture, or maybe a smile is just a mask. But, I hoped that, maybe when we smiled together, it wouldn’t just be a gesture or a mask. It couldn’t be because… It’s love! I love to smile for you, because I know you love to smile too. So teach me how to smile so that we can smile together.