Oh, Mona Lisa,
thank you for teaching
me today at the coffee shop,
a lesson in how to smile
without smiling
I’ve always tried to offer
strangers a warm mitigating
grin that says, trust me.
I’m not so bad.
Maybe it seems childlike.
I don’t know. It certainly
feels that way.
Modicum of wordless kindness.
But you taught me today, Mona,
not to soften the edges.
Let them be jagged,
no grin at all.
