Smile Darling

There’s this girl I know.
She’ll be eighteen soon
but she certainly doesn’t show it.

She’ll smile and her whole face will light up
and she will fool you into thinking
she’s perfectly okay.

Then on the inside buried deep down
there’s this thing that consumes her
but you’ll never see her frown.

I’ve been there and now I know her well,
I’ve seen her trapped in her own personal hell.
It killed me to see her in that place.

I was already dead but that cut me raw.
I’d see her with that smile on her face
and ‘smiling is infectious’ I learnt at this place.

But infection control stopped that smile from spreading
and now she’s been taken back in
by that devil and that monster
with little hope to hang on to
above the murky waters of depression
and if she falls, she’ll be gone.

Drowned in the flood of despair and disgust
she’ll die fast but who will notice?
Her body ridden with scars but covered up
by long sleeves and her smile
that once lit up her world has faded to a dim glow
deep inside her.

But it is still there and she fights still.
The wave of depression will not turn off that hope;
it will stay there inside her
until she realises that that is still there
and the monsters couldn’t touch her
when she held out her guiding light.

And now she wears that smile again
like the rivers never flooded over her
and like she  had never taken it off.

She wears that smile with the pride of a survivor
because she is.
She survived the agony and torment of the disease
but she came through all the pain
and lived up to this day
when she finally announced
“I survived”
and kept smiling like it was an easy battle
but a battle well fought.

© Charlie 2013

(A poem for Emily from hospital x)