Technicolor

My mom always said I smile better with my teeth
I never believed her, but now I’d like to
I just can’t bring myself to look into the mirror
Every photo with her I heave a smile with my lips shut
And I have no one to smile around
No one to take pictures of me to prove to me my humanity
Memories to keep into the future exist only in my mind - never on paper
Will I ever know if she was telling the truth?
Maybe joy is contained within these pictures
A fleeting moment that stops when the camera flashes
Maybe true happiness only exists in cumulative moments of joy
And memories - when not captured - weather my rugged heart away
Every grain gone to the wind only serves as a reminder of time lost
Rather than time cherished when the photo lives to cherish me

But what of the emptiness eking an existence in me?
Welling tears in my stomach that rise up as easy as the bile in my throat
As constant as the dull ache of my heart
Pounding as always, dull as my eyes and dull as my smile
Loneliness eats away at me as unending as the night
And blinds me as easy as the fluorescent lights by which I govern my life
Some days I wonder if it ever could get better
The universe deals me an unfair hand — almost a divine comedy
How God himself seems to be laughing at me
I know I’m destined for hell - but maybe I died years ago and I’m already there
Dangling the feeling of what it means and feels to be human
If only just for a moment
To have a friend who loves you
But nobody else who could ever give you that same feeling
To be able to be myself
With no one who wants to see me as I am meant to be
Maybe fleeting moments of joy are all I can get in hell
And maybe the universe will take that away from me too - someday when I least expect

Someday I’ll get my dream job and die at 27
And in the books they write they’ll never talk about the part of me that wants to be happy
They’ll make a movie and shoot it in a camera obscura
The endless void that consumed me becomes a projection
Who I thought I’d be and who they want me to be
A troubled, reserved child in an eternal clash with the blossoming nomad
Until one day all they have to remember me by is burned into Technicolor
To the friend who’ll go to bed every night after that day with my smile burned into his mind
Toothy as I’ve always wanted it to be - the nomad finds his home there
In the peace of the eternal void which I float in at least I died knowing
There is still some kindness in this world - however rare and frail
And one day we will reunite - one way or the other - if heaven, hell, both or neither exist
Two lost souls will always find their way back to each other through cosmic distances
The proof - how he knew all I needed in that moment of me, smiling earnestly with my teeth
Was a photo to set my unbound joy into history
And maybe nobody else could make me feel human quite like him
But in those moments even hell can feel like heaven
With the purest eyes and the brightest smile - two lost souls hiding their pain from the world
But revealing their truest selves to each other in the language only they can speak
An endless potential finds itself in two nomads whose home is each others’ hearts