Smile - napowrimo #6

i love looking at the father's smile, his child smile:
the something i miss, the something i never knew,

never saw the one on the right.
now he's left-handed, on the left in another home

alone and working like a brand new engine,
smiling only like a lion, only in times of need,

like when red meat stabs the carnivore's eye,
the mouth only opens widely then

when a kind of hunger takes over the body:
hunger of the lips that can no longer pinch

inward, hiding a smile.
i grab onto the weirdness of this photograph,

the fairytale of seeing him as something i could hurt,
like steel-toe boots on baby grass.