When your gaze found mine, the whole world swayed, As if the earth had missed a hidden beat; The sunlight suddenly grew unafraid, Then melted like warm gold around my feet. I tried to look away, but something stayed, A trembling little universe in you; My eyes became two doors I could not close, And every secret seemed to wander through. I felt my cheeks turn roses in the rain, A sudden fire underneath my skin; The stars began to whisper my sweet shame, While little suns kept blooming from within. Your eyes were not just eyes, they were a place, A strange blue room where gravity was gone; I wandered through the silence of your gaze And somehow lost the person I was on. My heartbeat stumbled, then forgot its name, It ran barefoot through corridors of light; I blushed as though the moon had called me beautiful, Then hid my face from heaven's watching sight. The trees leaned closer, jealous of the view, The flowers opened wider just to see; Even the wind became unusually shy, As thoug...
I woke up with a raw smile
where my tears were meant to be.
No one noticed.
Morning was busy unfolding its pale machinery,
the kettle coughing up ghosts,
the windows chewing sunlight,
the floorboards remembering
the weight of every footstep
that had ever left.
I stood before the mirror
and found my face slightly wrong.
My eyes were too quiet.
My mouth was bleeding light.
There was a smile there,
red at the edges,
unfinished in the middle,
like someone had carved happiness
into a door
without knowing what lived behind it.
I touched it.
It smiled harder.
So I stopped touching it.
Outside,
the city had grown wings overnight
but refused to fly.
Buildings leaned into one another
like tired animals.
Traffic lights whispered
the names of the dead.
A woman walked past
carrying a jar full of rain,
and every drop inside it
was trying to become a memory.
I wanted to ask her
where the sky had gone.
Instead,
my raw smile answered for me.
It said nothing.
It said everything.
It said:
I am fine.
And the words fell out of my mouth
like small, obedient knives.
By noon,
the sun had become unbearable.
It sat above the city
like an open eye
that had forgotten how to blink.
People gathered beneath it
wearing ordinary faces.
They laughed.
They bought bread.
They kissed beneath umbrellas
though there was no rain.
I watched them
and wondered where people kept
the things they couldn't say.
Perhaps beneath their fingernails.
Perhaps inside old photographs.
Perhaps in the soft machinery
behind the ribs.
I had kept mine in my mouth.
That was the problem.
Every secret I swallowed
turned into another tooth.
Every grief I refused
learned how to bite.
Soon my smile had grown teeth
of its own.
It began eating the hours.
One by one.
Monday disappeared first.
Then Tuesday.
Then an entire summer
I could no longer remember living.
I tried to cry.
Nothing happened.
I pressed my palms against my eyes
until stars appeared.
They were not stars.
They were tiny locked rooms
with someone crying inside each one.
I opened one.
A child stepped out.
He looked exactly like me
before I learned
how to hide from myself.
He carried a red balloon
and a dead moth.
“Is this yours?” he asked.
I asked him what.
He pointed at my smile.
I told him no.
He looked disappointed.
“You always say that.”
Then he disappeared
through the smallest door
in the wall.
I had never noticed the door before.
I opened it.
Behind it was an ocean.
Not an ocean like the ones
people photograph.
This one was inside-out.
The fish swam through the sky.
The moon lay at the bottom
like a coin someone had dropped
into God's pocket.
There were houses floating beneath the waves,
their windows lit,
their curtains breathing.
I saw myself
standing in one of them.
Then another me
standing behind that me.
Then another.
An endless corridor
of selves
each wearing the same raw smile.
Some were old.
Some were children.
One was made entirely of rain.
One had no face.
One had my hands
but someone else's sorrow.
They all looked at me
as if I were late.
“What are you waiting for?”
the rain-me asked.
I said,
“For myself.”
It laughed.
The sound became thunder.
Thunder became birds.
The birds flew into my chest
and began building nests
between my ribs.
That night
I slept with the window open.
The darkness climbed inside.
It sat beside my bed
and asked permission
to become me.
I said yes.
In the morning
my shadow was gone.
I searched everywhere.
Under the bed.
Inside the wardrobe.
Behind the curtains.
Nothing.
Then I found it
sitting at the breakfast table,
drinking coffee from my cup.
“You left me,”
it said.
“I didn't.”
“You did.”
“When?”
“Every time you smiled
when you wanted to disappear.”
I couldn't answer.
My raw smile
answered instead.
It had begun to crack.
Tiny fractures
ran across my cheeks.
Through the cracks
came water.
Not tears.
Something older.
Something that remembered
the first ocean
before the earth had a name.
It flooded the kitchen.
The chairs floated away.
The walls became transparent.
The ceiling opened
and released a thousand blue horses
into the room.
They galloped through the rain
that wasn't rain.
They carried clocks
in their mouths.
Each clock showed
a different version of my life.
In one,
I stayed.
In one,
I left.
In one,
I said what I meant.
In one,
I never learned to smile.
I watched them pass.
Then one horse stopped.
It lowered its enormous head
and looked directly into me.
Its eyes were two deep wells.
“Why are you afraid to cry?”
it asked.
I wanted to say
I wasn't.
But my mouth had become tired
of lying.
So I told the truth.
“Because if I start,
I don't know
what will come out.”
The horse nodded.
It understood.
Then it opened its mouth
and released a river.
The river entered in me.
It moved through my bones.
It washed the teeth
from my mouth,
raw smile,
that was my deep imagination.
thoughts.
© 2026 Gloria Penelope
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