Your Smile and Mine (short, short story)
By Luke Labern
I caress your face; I stroke your cheek; I run my fingers gently over the smoothest thing I’ve ever known. You smile very slightly — yet it says more than any smile I’ve ever seen before. Delicacy personified, I have the most precious thing in front of me and all I want to do is make a gentle back-and-forth motion with the tips of my fingers as gently as I can. I want you to know that I love you simply through these movements and this moment: I want to transmit exactly how I feel: the subtlety of my emotion; every nuance of my appreciation of you; I want the moment to be immortalised and I want to prove how genuine I am – all through touch.
And you know who I am. I make the same mistakes as other men, because I am human. But it is the reverse – the ‘good’, or rather the different, the unique, the trail-blazing – that is where I define myself. And that is why you let me in when others have tried and devoted themselves to you, fallen for you, and been rejected. I can be delusional too: I can be over-bearing and too intense; too enthusiastic. But when it’s just you and I, reduced to our bare, essential natures – naked, as it were – when we have spent hours together and there is nothing left to prove… that is when we remember how and why we are continually drawn to one another. With anyone else, I am certain man: but with you, I am the best. The most profound version of myself. My words tumble effortlessly and fall together as if placed by a divine hand: I don’t know how I do it – if I tried, I would fail. It is simply that I am comfortable, truly comfortable, and at one with myself around you. And you are the same: in a split second a joke is said, a witticism escapes from your breath – and we laugh as if we will live forever.
In fact, that is the point: it is precisely because we are mortal that we laugh. We know that this is all a joke: life is a joke. Sometimes it is a bad joke; but when you and I are together, it is the most precious joke. It is you and I who have the last laugh. We didn’t choose to exist, and we have no option but to suffer and to die – but look at us: we are together, and we are matched with another unfortunate soul so exquisitely fitting to our personality that we can – even when we are apart – reminisce, and swim in memories of varying depths, and know that once (if not forever) we were gifted a time as perfect as is conceivable, as if drifting out to sea, floating, staring at the sky and being absorbed in a universe far grander than we.
Why is this translation the best? I have tried with words – and I will continue to – but they cannot match the feeling of a pulse quickening, or pupils dilating; a nervous anxiety undermining any resistance. When I sweep your hair behind your ear, time washes away: you are timeless beauty. I conjure images of centuries-old femininity, and the contrast between your hair and the delicacy of your skin and the shape of your face… reduces me. All I can be is a concentrated iota of adoration; a lifelong admirer. How such a simple motion can quell my fears; steal my breath; leave a writer lost for words; boil confidence into distilled awe and overthrow power with sublime delicacy, I’ll never know.
That is why only this simple act will do: because it is the purest thing that has the greatest impact. Your skin is the essence of life, femininity, silence; purity; serenity; calm. In this brief moment, all is said and nothing is missing. It could all end a second later and I would be completely fulfilled – posterity loses all appeal, and I am dissolved.
You comprehend it all, and reply with that very slight, but very telling, smile. I refuse to use the word, for that would be to taint and revert to cliché — but this is the only way I know how to express that emotion.
And all of it happens in seconds.
And you know who I am. I make the same mistakes as other men, because I am human. But it is the reverse – the ‘good’, or rather the different, the unique, the trail-blazing – that is where I define myself. And that is why you let me in when others have tried and devoted themselves to you, fallen for you, and been rejected. I can be delusional too: I can be over-bearing and too intense; too enthusiastic. But when it’s just you and I, reduced to our bare, essential natures – naked, as it were – when we have spent hours together and there is nothing left to prove… that is when we remember how and why we are continually drawn to one another. With anyone else, I am certain man: but with you, I am the best. The most profound version of myself. My words tumble effortlessly and fall together as if placed by a divine hand: I don’t know how I do it – if I tried, I would fail. It is simply that I am comfortable, truly comfortable, and at one with myself around you. And you are the same: in a split second a joke is said, a witticism escapes from your breath – and we laugh as if we will live forever.
In fact, that is the point: it is precisely because we are mortal that we laugh. We know that this is all a joke: life is a joke. Sometimes it is a bad joke; but when you and I are together, it is the most precious joke. It is you and I who have the last laugh. We didn’t choose to exist, and we have no option but to suffer and to die – but look at us: we are together, and we are matched with another unfortunate soul so exquisitely fitting to our personality that we can – even when we are apart – reminisce, and swim in memories of varying depths, and know that once (if not forever) we were gifted a time as perfect as is conceivable, as if drifting out to sea, floating, staring at the sky and being absorbed in a universe far grander than we.
Why is this translation the best? I have tried with words – and I will continue to – but they cannot match the feeling of a pulse quickening, or pupils dilating; a nervous anxiety undermining any resistance. When I sweep your hair behind your ear, time washes away: you are timeless beauty. I conjure images of centuries-old femininity, and the contrast between your hair and the delicacy of your skin and the shape of your face… reduces me. All I can be is a concentrated iota of adoration; a lifelong admirer. How such a simple motion can quell my fears; steal my breath; leave a writer lost for words; boil confidence into distilled awe and overthrow power with sublime delicacy, I’ll never know.
That is why only this simple act will do: because it is the purest thing that has the greatest impact. Your skin is the essence of life, femininity, silence; purity; serenity; calm. In this brief moment, all is said and nothing is missing. It could all end a second later and I would be completely fulfilled – posterity loses all appeal, and I am dissolved.
You comprehend it all, and reply with that very slight, but very telling, smile. I refuse to use the word, for that would be to taint and revert to cliché — but this is the only way I know how to express that emotion.
And all of it happens in seconds.
A Short Story,
Published 30 January 2012
Published 30 January 2012