Lines Brought By A Smile

I was born into a world that didn’t want me. To parents who hated each other. Who hated me for combining them both into one body. I was born in winter, when the world turned white and the howling winds came everyday deeper into the city.

From an age too early to make my memories, I learnt to make myself invisible. I appeared only for nourishment and when called. It suited us all. I did not expect to be loved and I was not.

I brought a smile to only one face. A face crinkled so deeply by age that it was hard to recognise the lines brought by a smile. The person connected to the smile was known to me only as Miss. She lived next-door, and smelled like soap. She never spoke.

Every winter she celebrated my birth with a trinket chosen from the hordes of paraphernalia piled in her house. Ancient glittering objects that I hid at home, wrapped in old silk scarves. She was my only friend, old and silent. A ghost left over from a forgotten era.

I was more a part of her world, than my own.