Cracked

You see the smile and you think that she’s ok.

You hear the chipper voice and you think that she’s ok.

You notice her grades, the best in her class, and you think that she’s ok.

What you don’t see is that her smile does not quite reach her eyes.

What you don’t hear is that her voice cracks at the last syllable and trails off.

What you don’t notice is that her anxiety to be perfect causes her to project an outer shell of security.

When in reality she feels like she’s being held up by strings the size of spider silk.

Going through the movements of the perfect, put-together, social butterfly.

But her hands shake, her lips move and no words come out, her eyes cast downward.

Simultaneously her outer shell, her heart, and her mind crack.

Daylight, she tries to fill the splits with positivity.

Covers the ruptures with her hands.

Nighttime, evil thoughts flood through her fingers.

She drowns in cracked emotions.

Hearts explode.

Memories lost.

Nightmares rampage.

She needs more hands to cover her scars.

She sees idle hands of others who use them only to help themselves.

She tries to help heal the splits in other people’s lives.

While she loses it through the exposed cracks in her own skull.

You see the smile that she wants to be genuine again.

You hear the chipper voice that she wishes paralleled the inside again.

You notice her grades, the best in her class, that she wants to have the motivation to learn again.

But she is like a magnificent boat with no wind to fill her sails.

A flowing river that always ends in a waterfall.

Where she panics.

Tumbles.

Free-falls.

Crashes on the rocky abyss.

Cracked.