Weight of Joy

He sits where laughter goes to die, among smiles that learned how to rot. Each grin once promised light, now heavy as regret in his hands. The walls remember childhood better than he does flowers still brave enough to bloom, a rainbow bleeding down the cracks, hope painted by someone who hadn’t learned loss yet. Joy didn’t leave him. It piled up. Too much to carry, too much to feel, until happiness itself became a burden. And in the quiet dampness of the room, he rests—not broken, just exhausted from holding what the world told him to want.