So there's this one chick, a semi-regular at Rich O's, who is perhaps the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. Note, please, that I said seen and not known. Or even met.

She's maybe little too stocky. She's perhaps little bit on the "cuddly" side of slender. She's possibly a little bit bottom-heavy. Her hairstyle is a crew-cut, of all things. A girl that you might not notice at all, and if you did you'd probably figure she was a carpet muncher. In other words, a completely normal person for Rich O's. You probably wouldn't give her a second glance if you weren't a lesbian yourself.

Unless you got lucky, as I did when I first saw her. Unless you got lucky enough to see her smile.

This girl is possessed of what TallLady once called "Good bone structure." That's how she pulls off the crew-cut. So she is pretty, in a generic and unremarkable way.

Until she smiles.

When she smiles, angels in heaven claw their own eyes out because they cannot bear the beauty that's revealed.

When she smiles, flowers close their petals, and butterflies ground themselves, and sunsets halt their progress. They all know that they cannot compete, so they do not even try.

Her smile lights up a gloomy room the way a lighthouse does a rocky coast. It shows everyone that there is an unthreatening path, that there is a safe harbor, that there is something worthwhile at the end of the voyage. Whatever that voyage may be.

I don't know this girl at all. I talked to her for the first time tonight. I said something funny, and I made her smile.

That right there, that I could, if only for a moment, bring such beauty into the world, that should be enough to carry me for quite a while.