Tied Together With a Smile, Undone

And everything is wiped away, the sky turns bright blue, and the colors you know turn brighter: a smile. The look we all know and use, but rarely ever when we’re by ourselves.

Vividly picture, imagine, a square gift box, perfectly cubical. It’s white, hard to the touch, but squish-able, and it’s wrapped with a ribbon, twin ribbons that are red. In the midst of all the white and clashing red, on top is a perfectly tied bow. So humble, so ambiguous, chilling, frightening–so unknown.

Every meeting is an exchange of gifts; a smile is the most conventional, universally, known gift. Generally we all own a smile, many smiles, smiles that can change, but nevertheless still a smile. A gift, wrapped with upturned edges, a familiar warm gift we all know, that’s contagious and delightful, like a cold citrus beverage on a blistering day. But what we don’t usually notice: within those gifts, the smile, the wrapping undone, is a hoard of black; there is no bottom. There is no end to the opening gift. You would know, as you peer into a never ending hole– nothing, but deep into your soul.

You only see yourself.

Or rather, figuratively “we” are the gifts, and smiles, they are like the laced ribbons that wrap us securely. What if, a loose string came undone–”Oh, I had a peak at inside the gift.”
And with that peak.. well, we’ve all guessed our gifts before, at birthdays, Christmas, et cetera.
We shake them, feel them, try to loosen the ribbons, tear a little wrapping.. everybody wants a peak, but rarely do we ever intentionally rip a gift open, not till the time is given to us, not till the giver is ready for their gift to be opened. Assumptions are made. We try to incorporate all our past observations and deduce what’s inside. But even if we peak, the whole picture isn’t there, and it’s dark, and your brain makes up reasonable possibilities–which is a contradiction–reasonably you can’t see the full picture with just one corner of the puzzle done.

So we just guess.

Ribbons have many colors and many qualities. Not everybody has enough ribbons, not all that are durable, and with that, accidentally or purposely the gift is open. Hopefully your gift is accepted, and an extraordinary exchange is made. But no amount of new ribbons, or old taped up ones, can conceal the gift once again, at least to the people who already saw. And what they saw, like most gifts, will be unexpected.

So it’s undone, it’s out; the bucket of unholy guts has already splattered the concrete.
Many will come to an understanding, that behind ribbons that are laced smiles, the gift inside might not be pretty, but ‘it’s the thought that counts’. With gifts– with ourselves–when we present them, there are only so few reactions: rejection, acceptance… or pretend to like it and exchange it for credit.

Do you know that feeling, the one when the birthday girl/boy gets to your gift, the overwhelming inferiority. Anxiety.