WhO iS sHe?

She is the girl standing there,

dutifully doing as she is asked (or usually told).

With what appears to be the warmest and largest of smiles,

when inside her heart and soul is unbearably cold.

Like a marionette doll (on steel strings nonetheless),

she dances to the way her strings are jostled, swung, and pulled.

She effortlessly glides through a web of "merriment" and "charades",

leaving many people pleased, amused and fooled.

The expectation set upon her,

is one she has no choice but to complete.

She does what she has to, to keep people happy,

although her soul daily wants to quit in defeat.

She is branded crude, ungrateful, and mean

if she does not do and act as she is told (not asked).

So she dances her dance, and flashes a beam of a smile

albeit it breaking in tiny fragments, behind her "ebullient" mask.

So who is she, you dare ask??

Cannot ask her because she no longer knows.

She is conflicted within her smiles she wears dutifully,

and the emptiness in which her soul and heart, throes.