The Taste of Laughter

Time folds like seaweed,
Wrapped in rice and memory.
Bitterness, salt, and a hint of sweetness.

---

The sushi bar was new—sleek, warm, the hum of soft jazz just barely rising over the hush of a conveyor belt that moved like time itself. Plates passed, delicate and precise, each one a quiet offering.

He sat across from me. Older now. A little grayer. Sharper around the edges. But still—beneath the lines and pauses—there was the shape of who we used to be. Two broke students once convinced that ordering sushi was for people who had figured life out.

Back then, sushi was a rumor in Ljubljana. Exotic. Unreachable. Something you saw in movies, not menus. We’d stretch a single espresso for hours, sharing cigarettes and dreams we didn’t quite believe in.

Tonight, there were no toasts. No photos. Just quiet honesty.

He told me about the miscarriage.
I told him about the divorce.
He spoke of his father’s fading.
I nodded, tracing the rim of a tea cup.

We passed grief across the table like soy sauce. Small portions. Just enough.

And then—midway through the fourth plate, between unspoken things and plates we couldn’t name—he asked,

“So… what still makes you laugh?”

It hit like wasabi. Clean. Piercing. Real.

I thought of that professor who used to fall asleep during our oral exams.
The eggs we fried on a radiator and ate anyway.
That night dancing in Metelkova, soaked and staggering, certain nothing could ever really hurt us.

And I said,

“Honestly? This. You. Me. And this conveyor belt pretending we’re not slowly turning into our fathers.”

He laughed. I did too.

Not loudly. But deeply.

The kind of laugh that rests in your bones long after.

Not because anything was funny.
But because we were still here.

---

Laughter isn’t the absence of pain.
It’s what rises through the cracks.
It’s the quiet rebellion of still being human.

Some friendships don’t fade—they just grow quieter, truer.

And sometimes the best question isn’t “How are you?”

It’s “What still makes you laugh?”