‘You Make Me Smile’

Photographer: Miguel Teirlinck

You Make Me Smile

Content Warning: This story contains mentions of violence towards a personified, non-human object.

Tonight, my boyfriend made me smile.

A lot of people think our story is strange, but it never felt strange to me. The truth is, he knew me from the moment I was born. Ever since my earliest memory, he’s been right there by my side. I was raised practically in his backyard, so it’s no wonder he saw me every day. He was so tender with me then. Sometimes I miss those days. They seem like forever ago, now.

I hate summer. It’s too hot and humid for me, and there are birds everywhere. I’ve always been afraid of birds. I have horrible nightmares of them swooping down at me, pecking me incessantly with their insensitive little beaks, gouging holes in my skin, ripping away at my soft flesh and eating away at my insides until there’s nothing left of me. Would he still love me then? Would anyone, if I was just a scattered pile of guts and disappointment on the ground? Anyway, that’s why I hate summer. But he made it better. He would scare away those awful birds, and he would bring me a glass of water every day so I wouldn’t get too thirsty out in the hot Sun. For a long time, he felt like a father to me, someone who was always there to protect me and make things right. But as I got older, grew, developed, he began to feel like something more. He was my person. I realized I loved him more than I loved my own father, who I had never even met. This confession might make a lot of people uncomfortable, but it’s true. Some people call what he did ‘grooming,’ but it wasn’t like that. He raised me. He cared for me as I grew up.

I hate summer, but autumn is my favorite season. I love the cool nights and the short days, and I love to look up at the sky and see those stupid birds flying south for the winter. Good riddance! But most of all, I love to see the leaves change before my eyes. Reds, oranges, yellows, and browns paint the world. I always hoped I could capture some of that color for myself. A lot of my friends did as they grew, but I remained blank as ever, as creamy white as a ghost. I didn’t mind too much because he didn’t seem to mind. He watched as those friends of mine grew and developed alongside me, but somehow he only ever seemed to have eyes for me, he only cared about me so deeply. He was colorful enough for both of us, anyway. 

Those cool autumn nights were so romantic, it was like we were living in a fairytale. He would come to meet me in the garden behind his house, our secret rendezvous. He would put his loving hands on my cheeks and caress me, and gently run his hand down my back to soothe me as he held me close to his body against the creeping cold. Sometimes, he would even kiss me if he thought no one else was watching. I felt more special than anyone in the world when he was this sweet and tender with me. I could only sit there and gaze at him in wonder. He really did seem so beautiful to me then. I suppose he still is.

There is something he always did in our garden that I adored. While he ran his hands over my body, he would quietly sing these gentle songs. It wasn’t like he was singing to me, seductively serenading me. He wasn’t singing for anyone else in the world, for that matter. He just sang to himself, always a sort of half-minded, lazy kind of tune with no particular melody and no particular meaning. He would just sing and hum peacefully to himself, sometimes even whistling a bit, and I just sat there and drank him in. To me, his voice was the most beautiful sound in the world. I wish we could go back to those charming nights in the autumn garden, when everything was still and beautiful in the world, and all I could hear was the wind rustling through the lovely orange leaves and the atonal but irresistible singing of my true love, lost in his own little world of thought that was forever out of reach to me.

I love autumn, but I dreaded the impending winter. Honestly, I was afraid of it. With the cold days, the deep darkness, and the snow covering everything, would he still meet me in the garden, or would he stay inside for the long winter months and slowly forget all about me and the love that we shared? I began to feel heartbroken when I thought that our parting ways was inevitable. But my true love surprised me. Instead of leaving me behind, he invited me into his home. I had never seen inside before, even though I spent so much time in his garden, collecting what little details I could of his private life through the window. That night, he carried me in his arms through the back door and gave me the grand tour. His house was lovely. There were hardwoods and soft rugs, clean sheets and nice, new appliances in the kitchen. He had candles burning all through the house that smelled like fall. Everything inside was warm and bright and cozy, and now it was my home too. It was all ours.

Admittedly, it was a little tough to adjust at first. He had to go to work almost every day, leaving before the Sun came up and returning long after the Sun went down again. While he was away, I was lonely in my new house. Perhaps I should’ve spent that time looking around a bit more, trying to learn more about the man that I was living with now. But I had no interest in snooping and losing his trust. I was slowly learning more and more about him, and I didn’t want to rush the natural process. Instead, I waited in the window all day for him to return, and I guess I started to consider him my boyfriend by then. While I waited, I watched the first gentle flakes of snow fall over the dry grass in the front yard, and felt relieved as the last of those horrible birds frantically took to the skies. They couldn’t get me anymore while I was inside. It was nice to have some shelter, especially a shelter as full of love and warmth as ours. When he finally came home at the end of his long work days, I would watch as he pulled his car into the driveway, and I felt excitement well up inside of me. He would smile at me with that gorgeous smile of his before he went off to make himself dinner, singing while he worked in the kitchen.

Things seemed so good for a while.

But tonight, we had a fight. I don’t really know how it started. It just sort of… happened. I don’t say this to absolve myself of my part of the blame, but I honestly don’t know what I did to cause this or what I could’ve done differently to prevent it. It was a bad fight. Before I even knew what was going on, he pulled a knife on me. At first, my heart was racing and breaking at the same time. I felt so heavy, so full of emotions that I could burst at any moment. Then, all at once, I felt empty. He cut me with the knife. He didn’t even seem angry or upset with me as he did it. In a strange way, he actually seemed to enjoy it. I hate myself for thinking that way, because I know him well enough to know that he isn’t like that.

Since I was very small, he had worked to fulfill me and make me feel so important, then suddenly I was made to feel hollow, like a shell of what I used to be. The illusion of an entire lifetime was shattered with one cruel cut, and he just sang and hummed in his distracted way as he did it. I was beyond shocked. I had avoided the birds that I feared so much, but it felt like my fate was the same. My insides were ripped from my body and thrown on the floor for everyone to see, and I just sat beside them as a naked carcass, a powerless onlooker. The love built over a lifetime was lost in an instant, but I was so drained of life that I couldn’t feel hatred toward anything either. All I felt were emptiness and a numb, sterile sense of disbelief.

How does someone move on from having their soul gutted at the hands of their love? How do they recover? How could I ever find the love I once felt for this man again, a love stronger than anything else I’ve ever felt? To my surprise, it wasn’t so hard to do. I guess when you care about someone so deeply, it takes a lot to make you forget those feelings. After I was made to feel so impossibly bare, my boyfriend immediately took me in his arms, lifting me from the floor and cradling my pale face in his warm hands. I thought for sure that he would cut me again, because although he held me in his lap, he also still held the knife.

But then, my boyfriend did something unexpected. He opened my eyes. I never realized that I had eyes of my own until they were opened for me in this singular act of affection. For the first time, I felt like I was seeing the world around me. It felt like I saw him for the first time too. I looked up into his dazzling, loving blue eyes with my own blank, misshapen eyes that I had only just learned how to use. For the first time, I could clearly see that we came from very different worlds, and yet the universe had brought us together in this house on this night. The precious little life we had built for ourselves in this cozy little home was unique and beautiful. I couldn’t utter a single word as I began to drink him in again, my heart now a blank slate. In that empty head of mine, I began to think about him just like before, but I also thought of him in a new way. I felt something faint and indescribable, something greater than any love I felt before.

And then, just like that, my boyfriend made me smile. I really don’t know how he did it. One minute he was cutting me to pieces, and the next my head was nestled in his lap and I just stared up at him, smiling. It really makes no sense at all. He just brought a smile to my face. As he saw my new smile take shape, a smile grew on his face too. There we were, sitting in the middle of the living room floor, surrounded by soft candlelight, smiling lovingly into each other’s faces after our first big fight. His smile is much better than mine. His teeth are handsome and white and full, all perfectly aligned in a mouth that’s centered on his beautiful face. Mine is gap-toothed and crooked and silly-looking, but that didn’t seem to bother him. He loved me all the same, which made me feel even more deeply for him.

I have a new identity now. I have a new face, one with big eyes and a big smile. It was a new beginning for me, for both of us really. He smiled and ran his soft fingers over my new face and he seemed to really love it. At last he brought that terrible knife back to the kitchen. He was grinning like a child when he scooped me up in his arms. He held my cheeks between his hands, just like he had in our secret garden so long ago, but this time he admired my new features and gushed with pride and joy. He tried to kiss me on my new lips, but I was so amazed with him and with myself that I just couldn’t stop smiling. After a long time of looking into each other’s faces, he took me to the kitchen and started cooking himself dinner. I watched him from the table while he worked and whistled a joyous tune to no one in particular. I still felt empty, but I felt like I was ready to start drinking him in again and giving him another chance. I could only hope that he would give me another chance, and that I wouldn’t ruin it by disappointing him again.

My boyfriend ate dinner with me at his side, and I couldn’t take my new eyes off him. He really was quite incredible, and I was so fortunate that he chose me instead of the others to take into his home. Even after a fight like the one we just had, it felt like we were more deeply in love than ever before. Still, I couldn’t stop feeling so hollow. Maybe I felt like this because he was perfect in every way, and even with a new face that he seemed to love so much, I was just my mediocre self.

By the time he finished eating, I still felt so empty, despite the incredible love for each other we had found again. Maybe trust takes a long time to rebuild, but I didn’t like feeling like that. I began to wonder how long it would take to heal my spirit. As if he knew what thoughts were going on in my empty head, he took me in his arms again and did something miraculous. 

Although earlier he had made me feel barren, now he made me feel alive again. Inside me, it was like he lit a little fire so my heart and soul were all aglow. The same warmth of the candles that enveloped us in our loving home radiated within me. I was hollow no more. He filled my being with warmth and affection and purpose and power like I had never known. In minutes, I had gone from feeling absolutely nothing to feeling everything all at once. I had loved him before, but now I was completely entranced. I adored him, I idolized him, I worshipped him. I couldn’t bear to think of a world without him. Even his cold act against me with the knife from only a few hours before seemed like a faint memory, a memory that now seemed improbable. How could someone so pure do something so hurtful? I’m probably misremembering the details. Stupid me, without a thought in my empty head. I don’t even know how the fight started in the first place. I’m sure it was all my fault to begin with, me being the way that I am. I’m sure he had no choice, and I’m sure that doing what he did brought him as much pain as it brought me, maybe even more. But since then, I have been reborn. I vowed to never upset my boyfriend again, now that he has opened the eyes I didn’t know were closed, found the smile I didn’t know was hidden, and filled the soul I didn’t know was so cold and empty. 

I hardly had time to enjoy the incredible light he left with me because before I knew it, he was kicking me out. I don’t know what I did this time. I don’t know what I did to upset him earlier, and I don’t know how I managed to upset him so quickly after swearing to never upset him again. Sometimes I hate myself for being so inattentive, for hurting him the way I always seem to do with my constant carelessness. Only seconds after he gave my soul a new life, he threw me away. One moment he lovingly held my face in his warm hands, then suddenly he was taking me outside, easing me down on the step, and closing the door behind me. He smiled the whole time he did it. He seemed to be glad, practically celebrating, the fact that our time together had finally come to an end. Was I so terrible that my leaving brought him so much joy?

I’m still trying to sift through the events of the night, wondering what went wrong or what could’ve gone better, and what I’ll do now that our relationship seems to be over. I’m still sitting on his front doorstep, and I don’t know what to do with myself. I can barely see through his window, looking into the house that we once shared, full of warmth and life. Through the walls, I can hardly make out the carefree singing that I once loved so dearly. Now it’s wasted on an empty room.

It’s cold outside. I had watched the snow falling through the window and thought it was wonderful, before I knew that I would be sitting outside in it, stripped of the comfort and safety of a home. I guess I don’t mind the cold. It might seem like I should be mad or lost or forlorn about being kicked out of the house, losing the love of my life, and sitting outside with the cold and the dark and the last lingering birds waiting to gouge out my newly-opened eyes with their beaks. But somehow, I don’t feel any of those things. The fire is still alive inside of me, keeping me warm and hopeful. Although everything looks bleak right now, I still can’t seem to wipe this stupid smile off my face. I just sit here on the step, watching the snow blow across the ground, smiling at every child that passes by on the sidewalk. I’ve been reborn, repurposed. I’ve been given another chance. And most of all, I feel grateful for the love I once shared with the man who I still hope can be my boyfriend, even though I don’t know what he thinks of me anymore.

I’m sitting on the front step on this final night of a cold October, basking in my new, inexplicable revelry, when suddenly a child dressed like a pirate points his little finger at me and says, “look at the jack o’ lantern glow!”

Evan Truth lives by night for the sound for rock bands in his city. By day, when he isn't reading the work of literary greats, he is trying to write his own. Follow him on Instagram @evan.truth.