the weight beneath the smile

Mira Thompson had always loved the sky. When she was younger, she used to lie in the grass behind her house, tracing shapes in the clouds with fingers stained green from dandelions. She believed, then, that the sky held stories that it spoke in sunsets and whispered in winds. Her journals from childhood were full of these thoughts, full of color and life and the strange poetry only children seem brave enough to believe in. But lately, the sky had gone quiet. At seventeen, Mira’s days began with the same dull ritual. Her alarm buzzed at 6:30 a.m., and she’d lie there in bed, unmoving, for at least thirty minutes, watching the ceiling and wondering if today would feel any different than the last. It rarely did. Her room painted a pale lavender that once made her feel calm now felt like it was pressing in on her, too soft, too still. A sanctuary that had turned into a cage. When she finally pulled herself up, her body felt like it carried double its weight. Everything brushing her hair, choosing an outfit, making it down the stairs—was like walking through molasses. It wasn’t about being lazy. It was something else. Something deeper. Something she didn’t have the words for. Her mom called it “a phase.” Her dad said she was probably just “overwhelmed from school.” They didn’t see her disappear behind her smile every day. They didn’t see how much effort it took to simply exist. Breakfast was another ritual. Her mother would set out toast and eggs, humming off-tune as if trying to anchor the house in normalcy. Mira would sit at the table, staring at her plate, nodding when spoken to, taking mechanical bites. Some days she didn’t eat at all. No one noticed. Or maybe they did and didn’t want to admit something was wrong. School was worse. She moved through the hallways like a ghost. Teachers didn’t call on her. Friends had grown distant. Even Leah, her best friend since seventh grade, seemed unsure of how to reach her now. It wasn’t their fault. Mira didn’t know how to explain it either. How do you tell someone that the world is still moving but you’ve stopped? She couldn’t even remember when it began this slow slide into nothing. There hadn’t been a moment of impact, no single traumatic event. Just a quiet erosion of joy. A thousand small goodbyes to things that once made her happy. Her sketchbook had dust on the cover. Her favorite playlist now sounded like noise. Even the sky once her solace seemed gray and mute, like it had forgotten how to speak to her. She had tried to journal. Her therapist, one she’d seen for three sessions before her parents claimed they “couldn’t afford it anymore”, had suggested it. But the words didn’t come like they used to. Her entries were short now, just fragments. I’m tired. It hurts to pretend. What’s wrong with me? At night, she curled beneath her blanket and listened to the soft hum of the radiator. It was the only sound that didn’t demand anything from her. Her phone would buzz, texts from Leah, sometimes a message from a classmate about homework, but she rarely replied. The thought of conversation exhausted her more than the silence. On some nights, darker thoughts crept in. Not loud, not dramatic, but insidious. Thoughts like: Would anyone notice if I disappeared? Or: Would it matter? She hated those thoughts. They scared her. But they came, uninvited, like shadows stretching across the floor at dusk. She didn’t want to die. She just didn’t know how to keep living like this. That evening, Mira stood by her window. The sun was setting in streaks of orange and pink, bleeding through the horizon. It was beautiful, she could see that, but she couldn’t feel it. The beauty felt distant, like looking at a photo of a memory you can’t quite recall. She opened the window. The breeze was cold against her skin, crisp with the scent of rain. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine she was back in the grass behind her house, a little girl with no weight in her chest, only sky in her thoughts. But the moment passed. She closed the window and sat back on her bed, feeling as if something inside her had cracked, quietly, invisibly. She didn’t cry. She hadn’t in weeks. The tears had stopped coming, replaced by a numbness that scared her more than sadness ever did. As the stars blinked into the sky,stars she used to name, Mira curled up on her side and whispered into the dark: “Please... let tomorrow be different.” But the sky said nothing back