☦️ • Creative Writer • CCBYSA
writer@michaelofstjoseph.com
Author of Where Things Went

What if I Said it Best? 🤔

#shortstory

What if I said it best and there was nothing else worth saying?

“He said it best,” said another man. “…And now there’s not another thing worth saying.”

“Oh please mister! One more time! The best thing you ever said, say it one more time!”

A young boy pulled at my trousers, begging me most desperately to say what I said once again. Bystanders froze on their cobble crosswalk journey, interest piqued in the most elegant phrase I had ever made. The boy tugged again at my clothes but his father turned him away.

“I told you son, he said it best. He said it before and never again because now it’s just not worth saying.”

I gulped down my stage fright alarm, the intersecting civilian fresco filled me with fear. Truthfully, I forgot what I said and was scared to try and speak again. I spoke aloud only once before at a time and place most distant. What I said? I wouldn’t know, but apparently it was not worth saying.

I perfected one moment, one simple sentence I formed. So great was this sentence that no other spoke of anything else but the saying. Pseudo-celebrity I enjoyed, in total only vain notoriety. I was as any other man but only possessed the perfect saying. My mouth it escaped but contents unknown. My authorship itself was in question. Only by me, as the boy and his father were so certain it was I who spoke it.

I said it best. *It* best is what I said. Intransient, impersonal it is of what I spoke. But the saying of which was lost forever (because it wasn’t worth saying again). “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again” was the anti-idiom of my saying. The counterpoint to which is what I spoke, the specifics? A long lost saying.

“He said it best… I know it dad. But mister, could you say it again anyways?” The son bargained with me the stranger, the civilians too concerned themselves with the great requested saying. Father shook his head and stamped his foot. He grabbed the boy’s hand and trod him off spouting his saying of sayings, “He said it before and never again because now it is. Not. Worth. Saying.”

Off they went! Gone away and the boy slump low with sadness. The paused passerbys resumed their walk and wordlessly went on their way. I said it best before and then, but now what’s best has flown far away. To where it went or what was said I couldn’t surely say. All that’s left that can be said is now it’s not worth saying.