She smiled, her missing tooth showing, with tiny smile lines
Yet it did not look ugly,
And shone..
That little hovering smile of hers was pretty
in the fact that it was deep from her heart
And a piece of art.
It was not the kind of a smile that was faked,
It was not the kind of a smile that makes your cheeks ache for making forced smiles,
It was not the kind of a smile that did not make others want to smile back,
Rather,
It was the smile that made everyone around her return a genuine, unfeigned smile,
It was the kind of a meaningful smile that created wrinkles near the eye,
It was the kind of a smile that made people admire her imperfections.
She grew, maybe because the world grew,
She then learnt, maybe because the world taught her to,
She cried and made silent prayers, maybe because the world made her to,
She struggled and suffered, maybe because that's how much the world threw at her.
Yet she pretended, as if her soul never received a scar
With denial and a fake mask, she went far.
Yet she pretended, as if everything else was okay
Just to make people around her feel okay.
She smiled at people who were once loved, once missed,
And who were now strangers, remembered.
She smiled,
when she was hurt,
when she was at her worst,
when the world threw thorns at her,
She smiled, holding back her storms,
She smiled, until her heart went numb.
Looking back,
She smiled with her crooked teeth and white hair
At every scar, every line, every flaw,
For they were proof of the life she had lived through it all.
She realised she was never meant to be perfect,
She was only meant to be herself.
