Bestow

Thank you for the smile, can you tell me where you got it? Oh, it’s yours? No wonder you give it so freely; it’s beautiful.

What a fortunate twist of fate, that you were bestowed such a gift. Many are not so lucky, that is to include me. Most are merely masks; insincere attempts for favor, hidden within parted lips and acceptable behavior. I’ve never been one to play the game, so I’m sorry, I don’t have my own to give in return.

From the inside, you say? But how did it get there? I can’t believe you were born with it. Surely, though, it must have been nurtured therein. Perhaps, as a youngling, your parents planted it, and fed to it love. Perhaps later, it rooted from societal zeitgeist. Have you always been told of your beautiful smile?

They are like razors to my jugular, vertical stripes astride the apple. Carving away the knot from this apple of no eye. Had I the unerring desire to leave this place, I’d surround myself with beautiful smiles. What better way to die…

Why did I thank you for the smile then? A rose proffers its beauty genuinely. Its only motive lies in a simple complexity, to have others bask in its profusion of grandeur; solipsistic maybe, but innocently so. Without calculation. Only an overwhelming overture to spread.

Ah! Your smile grew just then, as did the roses upon your cheeks. This is how I know it’s true, because of the company it now keeps. Without calculation, and it then spread.

As I said, I don’t have my own smile to give you, but that’s not to say that I can’t give you one anyway.

art: Smile Please by Rajasekharan Parameswaran