When the Smile Fades

There is a moment quiet and unannounced when the trained smile slips.

When the house is empty and the performance ends. I am alone with the darkness of my mind, and everything I’ve held back begins to surface.

My eyes feel heavy, as if carrying a weight no one else can see. They drag my face downward, setting it in stone. A smile feels foreign, almost absurd. My gaze is too alert, too aware, too haunted to soften into joy.

Inside, I feel cold. Hollow. Like something has died and calcified. I become a statue— till, rigid, unfeeling.

My brain stops producing warmth, stops offering comfort. I feel like rotting flesh, moving through life on autopilot, waiting for breath to run out.

This is not a cry for help. It is a truth. A moment. A fragment of the emotional landscape I inhabit. And like all landscapes, it shifts.