For My Depressed Friend

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 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 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 they did everything they could 

I asked your friends about it

And they told me its impossible to help a friend with depression

You used to give your smile to everyone so proudly

Until the day u didn't.

The memory of your 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...