Analyze the poem "A Smile Always Heals."

In Suma Subramaniam's short poem "A Smile Always Heals," we become reacquainted with the old adage that mother knows best. The speaker's mother has always told her that, in the words of the poem's title, a smile always heals. In other words, a smile makes everything better, and it can heal pain and suffering.

The speaker, a girl named Surya, puts this to the test by sitting next to her friend, with whom she's had a falling out, in the school cafeteria. She smiles at her but doesn't initially get a response. Surya's friend simply looks down at her food and eats her cheeseburger.

At this precise moment in the poem, it looks like mother really doesn't know best after all. Surya's friend is not responding to her friendly overtures. It would seem that she's still sore over Surya splattering ink on her shirt when she got Surya's name wrong.

In the event, Surya hits upon the simple expedient of saying sorry. This provokes a smile from her friend, leading Surya to conclude that her mother was right after all: a smile really does heal.

However, what's notable here is that the smile only came from Surya's friend—and by extension, the subsequent healing—after Surya said sorry. Perhaps this means that we should alter her mom's advice ever so slightly to include an apology in the process of healing.

What literary devices are used in the poem "A Smile Always Heals"?

The poem uses the literary device of second-person address, which gives the poem an intimate, conversational feeling. An example of this kind of direct address is the following:

I sit beside you in the cafeteria

and smile.

The poem also employs imagery, which is description that uses any of the five senses of sight, sound, taste, touch, or smell. In this poem, the imagery is primarily visual, with the different foods that the speaker and her companion eat compared:

You look down at your food

and eat your cheeseburger,

I eat the lemon rice in my box.

The descriptions of food are also symbolic and examples of metonymy and juxtaposition; "cheeseburger" and "lemon rice" represent the larger cultures the two characters, the speaker and her friend, come from. The speaker's vegan lemon rice and coconut are contrasted with the dairy-laden cheeseburger of her friend.

Diction also helps tells story of this narrative poem. The speaker uses the simple words of a child to convey a simple lesson about the importance of a smile to healing wounds.

Alliteration, which is when words starting with the same consonant are used in close proximity, helps establish a pleasing sense of rhythm in the first stanza of the poem, with repeated s sounds drawing attention to such key words as Surya, sun, and smile.