a smile to remember by Charles Bukowski (read by Tom O'Bedlam)

"We can see other people's behaviour, but not their experience."
"We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love." ...R.D. Laing, psychiatrist
en.wikipedia.or...
Painting by Henri Matisse (1869-1954) Woman Before an Aquarium 1921
the painting of the smiling woman, Madame Nancy Matisse, was inspired by Matisse, not painted by him. I found it here:
myquiethouse.wo...
we had goldfish and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
to be happy, told me, "be happy Henry!"
and she was right: it's better to be happy if you
can
but my father continued to beat her and me
several times a week while
raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn't
understand what was attacking him from within.
my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile!
why don't you ever smile?"
and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the saddest smile I ever saw
one day the goldfish died, all five of them,
they floated on the water, on their sides, their
eyes still open,
and when my father got home he threw them to the cat
there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother
smiled