Silly & Fortunate
It could've gone the other way.
This spontaneous writing materialized in response to Hallie Jules’ Slice of Life Valentine’s Contest:
I ignore the distant pain from the hot liquid searing my skin. My body is being jerked by convulsions, and I don’t trust my rattling hand to safely place the cup with the remaining sloshing tea on the table, not with most of my concentration going into the desperate attempt of controlling clenched oral muscles from spray-painting the kitchen with a mouthful of expensive oolong that’s primed and ready to be ejected in a spectacular explosion.
Sitting across from me, she is in a marginally safer state—the miniature espresso cup is safely resting on a delicate porcelain saucer. With envy, I notice how she’s able to use both of her arms, wrapped around her heaving torso, trying to control involuntary rhythmic movements, wet croissant crumbs littering the tabletop in front.
I don’t recall myself ever having been taken over by such pure and uncontrollable laughter. Not even as a child. Right here, in this singular point of space and time, both of us are submerged in a thick, sugary essence of happiness, high on the shower of dopamine, endorphins, serotonin, and probably a million of other ‘ins’ not yet known to science.
All thanks to an accident.
It could’ve easily gone the other way, too. She could’ve taken offence, decided to be disgusted, called it the last nail in the coffin of our relationship. A union that started a year ago burned bright, until gradually fading into routine and swampy predictability, veering into the territory of making less and less effort to live up to the image of ourselves we both conjured for each other, stopped pretending and, eventually, started noticing the “I” in “us”. The wordless passion shouldered out with weariness, pervasive thoughts of a breakup creeping in. Up until this morning, I subconsciously knew our days were numbered, even if I never allowed myself to admit it.
A stupid accident changed everything.
The annoyance from my occasional all-nighters in front of the Xbox, the soul-crushing boredom of her beloved theatre, the beer taking up too much of the fridge space, the tea towels that need to be folded and arranged in a specific way, and the myriad of other trivial, insignificant details pale before the magnitude of the discovery of being able to let ourselves go into a silly laugh so effortlessly and in such a perfect unison.
“I… love you.” I mouth for the first time ever, as soon as I’m able to regain partial control of my body.
“I love you too, you silly idiot!” She exclaims, wiping a tear.
We embrace in celebration of our first fart!
A wee bit of a disclaimer:
I deliberately chose the gendered cliche activities at the end (a guy is playing video games all night and hoarding beer, while a girl enjoys theatre and indulges in tea towel collection) as a way to emphasize triviality and silly insignificance of such personality traits. Despite being male, I totally recognize the utmost importance of proper organization of kitchen accessories and I also have a separate fridge, dedicated solely to beer (yes, really; yes, the one with a glass door).
Nice one
This was so sweet!