Paper Poetry

Your smile went right through me,
Even though it was tissue-paper thin.

Your first few words followed suite, to so gently strike my chest,
That it gave way with out really registering what it was doing.
Your words must have continued on deep into the stone wall behind my back, because they left me there with out the faintest idea of what you started your sentence with. 
The next word didn’t make it all the way through
It lodged somewhere in my heart,
Which beat faster in response to
This intrusion.

By then my esophagus was strong enough, it tightened in expectation
Your words hit, delayed, then bounced back to settle in your own throat
stuck there to prevent the escape of further explanations.

I’m sorry, but it seems I’ve broken the words that fell into my hands,
Because they cannot possibly mean what you are saying.

But my eyes know better it would seem, because suddenly I am looking
At a kaleidoscope version of yourself.
Somehow the lights from the window
Have mixed and broken your face into
Uneven
Imperfect
Lovely pieces

I don’t know why God must have dropped you like that, to leave us with the damaged version of yourself.

You ask me not to cry
And I comply,
For fear
That tears
Will dissolve your smile.