Keen

I have become keenly aware of my smile, after months where it was void. I knew it was there, with distant prints to my cheek where I felt the pliable flesh, teasing, toying, torturing it into formation. I could form it almost like a chubby fist to hardened dough. It never fit beneath my touch. It hurt, with its resistance when I tried to pull.

In that time, things I enjoyed did not draw my smile but something pitiful. Like a gasp of my soul expelling a heavy breath leadened by dread, or a tweaking of a grimace. An apology, promising paradise I cannot give.

But, today I smiled. I felt the unusual but easy tug of the left side of my face, the right easily following into an answering quirk. The former feels full- full of something I am unused to. Joy. Genuine, lifting at the helm of my mind.

And it is not at the cost of my heart. I do not have to bargain with someone in order to continue the growing fix. There is my dealer, an arms length away with coyness and charm loaded to the point.

Oh, how I smile.