Knives

I listen to you
with a smile on my face.
But you don't understand
what your words are doing. 

Knives rip into my skin, 
and it takes all my strength not to cry out. 
The agony is unbearable. 
But I hang onto sanity by laughing
like nothing is wrong. 

A dagger rips through my chest, 
straight towards my heart. 
Each word that comes out of your
beautiful, red lips
chips off a chunk of the organ I need 
to survive. 

I feel my insides slowly eroding away, 
still I keep my mouth shut tight. 

I'm so broken that the only thing I can do
without falling apart is 
laugh. 

But I'm laughing, 
so I'm okay, 
right? 

Wrong. 

But you will never know that,
will you?

Because if I seem happy, 
then why even ask how I'm doing? 
You clearly already know the answer. 

But I need confidence to speak my mind, 
and I ran out of that a long, long time ago. 

So I am stuck here being
insecure,
silent, 
broken,
and smiling.