dedicated to everyone who needs a smile today

I was having a particularly miserable few years.

Every morning, I'd wake up to ask why I couldn't just stay asleep. For good. And somehow erase everyone's memory of me. No memories, no pain. Clean and gone.

On one such day, on the crowded city bus, a little girl sat next to her mother as I stood gripping the pole. Though she couldn't have seen my eyes through my dark sunglasses, she looked straight at me.

Then, she smiled.

Even when I didn't—couldn't—give one back to her, she kept smiling.

I'd never seen her before, and I never saw her again.

Whenever I think of her now, more than a decade later, I can't help but smile.