One time, I met this guy on an airplane who had a really friendly smile. The kind of smile that isn’t big enough to be creepy and isn’t small enough to be fake. It made his cheeks reach his eyes and indented his face in all the right places. As we spoke, he laughed with me, at me, for me, and sheepishly when I tried to return the favor. And when the smile disappeared, I knew I wouldn’t be anxious over whether or not it would return— it would. It did.

And I don’t know how else to explain it. But it was a secure, cared for sort of feeling when I saw his smile. And I know it was most likely all in my mind at the time because I was tired, alone, overwhelmed, wrinkled and nervous so I probably unconsciously looked for what I needed in the only stranger that stepped out of the blur of stoic faces moving past me in whichever directions the pressure in their lives willed them to go, and smiled at me. But. When the cynic living in the back of my head isn’t listening, I like to think that maybe it was genuine, the smile.

I don’t know why it’s so hard to believe anymore. When did we start questioning sincerity? When did we start questioning kindness? Are we that scarred and self centered to believe that everyone is pulling something over on us? That there’s always a catch?

When did I begin switching tenses to bring all of us down with me when I am no better?

Sometimes I like to close my eyes and call his smile back to float among the popping lights and colors behind my eyelids that come from squeezing my eyes tight enough to keep the rest of the world from seeping in through the cracks like the flirtatious rays of the sun waking me up from a good dream that I can never finish even if I try closing my eyes again.

If seeing is believing, then maybe I can unsee what I want to unbelieve. I wouldn’t need to sit here succumbing to the cynical voice in my head that snickers at me when I look around and around and around and feel too much and want to feel a little less.

And I wouldn’t need to close my eyes and call back a friendly smile.

I think I’d do it because I wanted to, and because I cared more for the person it belonged to that I do for what their smile gives to me.

But I would never really want to feel a little less. It’s just one of those things I over-dramatize in my head.

Kind of like a stranger’s smile.

I’ve noticed that on the better days when I let the rays of sun coax my eyelids open, I find myself thinking about the friend behind the smile. And not because I need to.