Her Smile

Hey Anne,

Found this poem in one of Isaac’s boxes. Do you know anything about this woman? Did she really exist? Doubtful huh? 10,000 miles? Not sure anyone would travel 5 miles to visit a loon, except for social workers. Just being real, not mean. I’ve always loved our little brother, but his issues pushed everyone away.

Our ghost, Mr. Shrink, is back again. Poor Isaac!

Be careful, the paper is dried out. Looks like something chewed on it. Wash your hands afterwards!

Lizzy

Her Smile

Like a lotus flower
emerging from the muck
10,000 miles away
anonymously
over WiFi
on some web
where people:
hide
lie
tease
stalk
and lust with dirty words
and unwanted pics.

She smiled at me there:
a smile I could not see
with physical eyes – not yet.
I felt it in HER words,
in her presence with me,
on that web
networked together by
cables
wires
servers
satellites
digital signals
and hyperlinks –
all working together
over 10,000 miles.
A Miracle –
Finding HER there!

I BLESSED the Internet
but my computer and I
were DAMNED!
Losing vision
beginning long ago
before Her Smile.

A graphics card problem they said –
mimicking the future of my
dying eyes:
a slow death from
age, overuse and
traumas from things
seen and
Not seen, and
Not mattering
until I felt
Her Smile
on that web,
emerging through the muck
like a lotus flower.

Her profiled image
filled with
Digital Darkness –
camouflaging her dark skin.
Only a faint silhouette of HER:
Face…
Neck…
Shoulders…
Hips and
Sacred place.

Her Smile though:
an inner vision
of a blind man.
An angelic orchestration of
Happiness…
Compassion…
Wisdom…
Desire…
Miracles
and God –
Felt but Not seen.

Isaac, was this a familiar smile?
Has anyone ever smiled at you
like this – the way you envisioned
Her Smile?
Maybe your
mom, sister, grandmother; or
friend, neighbor, girlfriend; or
the one-night girl from Starbucks –
You remember the one, right?

No x Seven!

Never a smile like Her Smile!
Oh my God!
Her Smile –
a tsunami of
Sunlight
overtaking me,
enveloping me, and
warming
Every
cold spot
inside of me!

But, you had not seen this woman
…not in person
…not clearly in a photograph
…not over a web cam.

Your vision of her smile being:
Imagination,
Projection,
Hallucination, or
SYNESTHESIA: a faulty cross wiring
between your brain’s visual cortex and
Amygdala – the processing center of
your emotions.

Incorrect, Mr. Shrink!
Let us try metaphor,
shall we, Mr. Shrink?

55 minutes, our time is up, Isaac!

Not even 60 minutes?
Laughing –
Funny, Mr. Shrink!
Where can you go?
Are you not part of my
brain’s faulty cross wiring?
By any chance,
do you have wire cutters handy?
Laughing – ha ha ha
No wire cutters available?

Metaphor then?
Okay then!

Many years before
Her Smile on that dirty web,
there was an August day
at the beach at sundown.
I gazed across the dunes,
across the swampy grasses, and
across ponds of water
to the far horizon,
where GOD appeared –
SMILING at me!

Not a face with lips
No white teeth
Not the face of a man
Nor a woman –
Rather, an essence,
A DIVINE essence
appearing thru
natural occurrences.

The sun’s bottom edge
sank low and
touched the ground
at the horizon,
spreading
Golden light –
GOD’S light
from the sun
HE made for us.

This light,
HIS light,
reflected off the dunes,
streamed through the grasses,
and skipped along the waters –
setting all of it Ablaze!
A rainbow of color rays
sparkling like champagne and
fanning out
quickly like a
fire igniting in
every direction.

Stunned I was by the
warmth and intensity of it!
No turning away
I could not!
Speechless I was!
Paralyzed by
HIS beauty…
HIS love…
GOD SMILING at me!

“Yes, I know what you are thinking, Mr. Shrink. Most likely, this was a scene that occurred only rarely, maybe once or twice a decade, when a battery of various solar and atmospheric conditions all came together at the same time in that place; a perfect storm of beauty if you will, occurring at that particular moment, when I stood there at the beach, in that particular spot.

But you see Mr. Shrink, there was nothing that I could do but stand there staring at it, in awe at its extreme beauty. It was an encounter of the spiritual kind, as it moved me to tears of joy. And for that moment, God’s presence was before me and running through me. That is how Her Smile made me feel! It was the same experience, one coming through God’s sunset and the other coming through Her Smile that I felt inside of me without eyes – through her words to me. A smile I could not see, and that emerged like a lotus flower thru a muck of web people who lusted with dirty words and unwanted pics, from a real woman using the web 10,000 miles away.

Okay, I see you looking at me that way, Mr. Shrink! That quizzical look. The concern on your ugly Freudian face! Maybe you can cut me a little slack here, meaning that you stop looking at me as though I’m nuts or you are completely dumbfounded by what I’m communicating to you. Do me the kindness of thinking back to a time when you were completely captured by something. Yes I know, you are the rational, scientific type, and you try to keep the possibility of the spiritual out of things. HOWEVER, there must be something in your past that moved you to some sense of profound inner joy, despite the irrationality of it, where you could do nothing else but appreciate the wonder or miracle of it, as illogical as it may have seemed.

That is how Her Smile made me feel!”

BUT Isaac, you are comparing apples and oranges. An extraordinarily beautiful sunset at the beach is not the same thing as a woman’s smile, especially one that you’ve never seen with your actual eyes. Yes, a woman’s smile can be quite beautiful, I give you that. BUT, the sunset is inanimate solar energy, not GOD, and not a pretty smile that your eyes have never seen. This is why I mentioned the possibility of a cross wiring in your brain that confuses your emotional search for love with sunlight, sunsets, and an imagined smile of a beautiful woman on a trashy web site. Add some desperation to that too – the result of your failing eyesight.

But, I saw Her Smile
with my eyes
before they could
completely die.
Seeing what I once
only felt on that dirty web.

When, Isaac? This changes things, maybe.

A November sunrise –
a year after I felt
Her Smile
on that web
where people lust
with dirty words and
unwanted pictures.

A dark woman
from the home of
Gods and Goddesses
had traveled
10,000 miles
across hostile lands and
empty oceans
to a hotel room in a
dirty city –
where people
sometimes sleep
or wait for nobody
or somebody
and text dirty words
and unwanted pictures.

You met her there Isaac?

I walked into the hotel, and
climbed 10,000 stairs
to a dark room
to witness
Her Smile with my
dying eyes.

She was kneeling at
at the picture window,
facing the sunrise
as it momentarily hung
low at the far horizon
over the dirty city.

In solemn prayer she was –
her soft, dark hands
clasped together
in worship of the rising sun.

The emerging sun reflecting
off glass buildings,
streaming thru dark alleys,
and turning back up to the sky,
to bounce off the clouds and
back down through the picture window,
bathing all of HER in GOLDEN light.

Her big brown eyes
widened with wonder and blessing,
mirroring clouds colored with
orange rays of sunrise.
Her long dark hair
AGLOW and
flowing down
the gentle slope of her smooth back
and then fanning out
to cover HER sacred place.

Despite my silence,
she stood and
turned to me,
her eyes on
FIRE
shining with
Divine light!
Her Smile
rising quickly
like the morning sun,
like a beautiful lotus flower
emerging from the muck
of a dirty city.

Her Smile!
The warmth of it!
The love in it!
A Goddess before me
within my presence,
traveling 10,000 miles to smile at me.
I saw Her Smile at me!

Isaac

Liz,

I’m seriously messed up reading this! Can’t stop crying!

Did we never smile at him? Not enough maybe? He just wanted a fricking smile! A REAL smile! Was that so difficult for us?

Stop with the loon crap! She existed for him Lizzy, in some way. Maybe she was God to him, imagined or otherwise. Maybe she gave him something we never could. I know Liz, you think I’m a loon too.

Send me whatever else you find in the boxes. Don’t trash anything before asking!

Love,
Anne
xoxoxoxo

Note: This story/poem is entirely fictional. All events, situations, circumstances, and characters depicted in this story/poem are the products of my creative imagination. Any similarities between story characters and specific people in the real world are purely coincidental and unintentional. My characters are composites of “possible” personality types, behaviors, and quirks that interest me.

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