the image of words brushed against your teeth before they disappear. that one stayed with me.
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He says it automatically, at the end of a call, at the door, in the hallway, whenever two paths split apart. The words come out before he can think them through, they trigger themselves, like a…
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the image of words brushed against your teeth before they disappear. that one stayed with me.
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He says it automatically, at the end of a call, at the door, in the hallway, whenever two paths split apart. The words come out before he can think them through, they trigger themselves, like a light switching on from motion. Nobody called them. They arrived on their own.
They mean nothing specific. They wish nothing definite, no health, no happiness, no particular thing he actually wants for the other person. It's a sound that fills the gap where a real goodbye should be, and nobody notices, because everyone knows that sound and expects it in the same place every time.
He uses it on a coworker he barely knows and on someone he genuinely cares about. The difference between them disappears into the same phrase, as if it didn't matter who those words belonged to. Two different people, one identical echo.
Words that were supposed to carry weight get brushed against the teeth and vanish before they mean anything at all. A real wish requires attention. It requires knowing who you're speaking to, and what you actually want for them. It requires stopping for one second and looking at the other person as a person, not another checkbox in a list of goodbyes.
The phrase needs no attention. It works without it, works constantly, works even when the other person stopped listening long ago, works even when spoken into empty air, because its only job is to keep the silence from feeling awkward.
And so people walk away from each other with words on their tongue that said nothing, and nobody finds it strange, because that's how people say goodbye every day, over and over, without either of them remembering what the word was ever meant to mean.
Thoughts
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what made you pick 'two paths split apart' specifically? like why not just two different moments ending?
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the image of words brushed against your teeth before they disappear. that one stayed with me.
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is there anything left we still actually mean anymore, or have we automated all of it by now?
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what actually happens if someone stops for that one second? does the other person even recognise a real goodbye after hearing the automatic one every time?
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this made me think of my kids when they were little. they'd say 'bye mom' exactly the same way whether i was leaving for an hour or a week. it never seemed to matter who they were saying it to.
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when you picture someone saying it to the person they care about, does it come out different, or still automatic?
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twenty years of sitting with goodbyes. yeah, i recognise this: the way the same words stretch across everyone and nothing changes.
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do you think people ever notice? like does someone ever catch themselves in the middle of saying it and realise they didn't actually mean it?