A Poem To A Friend With Depression

Where did you hide your smile?

Is it beneath your tongue or did you hide it on a drawing you made years ago?

Is it trapped behind the glass of a framed picture

or did you hide it in a shoebox under your bed?

where you keep all those objects... ticket stubs, poems, pebbles from the seaside we visited

I wish you left your room more often or at least you allowed me to visit you

You said "the odyssey of our lives could be more than an oscillation between the things we didn't choose"

Therefore I shouldn't worry about you

When we were kids you used to give all your favorite toys away and I thought maybe this is what happened to your smile

You simply gave it away

I asked your parents about it and they told me that they did everything they could

I asked your friends about it and they told me it's impossible to help a friend with depression

You used to gift your smile to everyone so proudly until the day you didn't

The memory of you radiating happiness is fading

The best poems are hidden under a bed in a shoebox maybe like your smile

Yesterday a stranger smiled at me

I smiled back at them

And for some reason,

I knew

Dear Friend,

I wrote this poem to tell you that I found your smile