I'll slide down the rainbow arch of your brows.

I'll fill in the empty spaces of exasperated sighs between your lips.

I'll try to pick up all the recently defective lightning bugs scattered within your pupil.

I'll treat your jaw muscles with my own physical therapy until they agree to function again.

I'll muffle those distant echoing booms of thunder, deafening your ears.

I'll restore the delicacy that once resided within the skin covering your cheek bones.

I'll string an imaginary line of beads to outline that constant frown.

Then

I'll give back those few laughs that I saved for a rainy day.

I'll pry them from the safety of my "Box of Happiness."

I'll meld them into a necklace of toothy grins.

I'll stitch it to the skin around the back of your neck.

I'll pray the sunshine somehow seeps into you again.

I'll hope with desperation that the seed of memories will find a way to sprout in such conditions.

I'll wish it grows and grows;

up the lining of your jaw,

wrapping around your tongue,

peeking between your teeth.


Smothering the echo in your ears,

penciling in the words under your top lip,

reviving the fireflies in your eyes,

and forcing and ever belated

once common


Smile.