My primary school teacher was irritated
because I smiled like a flower.

“How do you even have the mood to smile
when you did so poorly on the exam?”

The whole class laughed at me
like a field of sunflowers.

“Now come and stand in front of the class.
Stand there until you can find someone
who has a brighter smile than you do.”

Suddenly, the field of sunflowers wilted
into a dark, obedient silence.

I stood for hours,
like a perpetrator
guilty of an unspeakable crime.

Thirty years have passed,
and I still feel the sorrow—

not for the childhood trauma,
but for forgetting why
I smiled like a flower.