Why You Smiling Poem by Ben Partenay

Why you smiling, you in that chair
made of glass?
Why you smiling, breathing that air
like it's glass?

At dawn I climbed the mountain
to look down
for nothing else
than to look down
on something.
And you,
you were smiling somewhere
thinking, I'm sure, 'what a
lost cause' I was.
And I was.

And you were smiling down below
the cold and clouds
below the rock and ice.
No avalanche would change
that.
And I smiled too, sometimes
when I could climb above things
and think of you
down in the belly of it all
smiling.
'You strong' they say.
But I'm not and never have
been. I need to get away
to understand, I need an
escape just to smile.

O the miles and miles
I've traveled just to
smile, and you?
You smiled at home
washing the dishes
fighting away tears
and cursing through
your teeth, and I was
never so strong
as that.