An Open Letter to the Cucumber Slice on My Left Eye

Dear Cucumber Slice,

You arrived at 2:08 PM and I was not emotionally prepared for you. I had been expecting the warm towel, the steam, the slight smell of something eucalyptus-adjacent that makes every spa smell like a specific kind of optimism. I had not been expecting you specifically. And yet, there you were: cool, firm, slightly damp, placed on my left eye with a precision that suggested you had done this before.

I'd like to use this letter to ask you some things I couldn't ask at the time, because my mouth was under a layer of something that smelled like green tea and my esthetician had just said "try not to move your face."

Where Did You Come From?

I don't mean this philosophically. I mean: were you part of a larger cucumber? Was there a right eye cucumber that was your twin? Is there a spa somewhere that still has your other half, wrapped in a damp cloth in a small refrigerator, also wondering about its life choices?

I've read that cucumbers have anti-inflammatory properties and that their coolness can help with puffiness. I believe this. I believe you were helping. I felt it. But I also felt that you were very calm about the whole arrangement in a way I found both reassuring and slightly unsettling.

Did You Know What You Were For?

I'm asking because I didn't, really, until you were on my face. I'd seen the image — woman, white robe, cucumber slices, expression of total peace — enough times that I'd stopped registering it as a description of an experience and started treating it as a stock photo. Generic. Aspirational. Slightly clichéd.

And then it was me. And you. And the steam tent. And thirty-seven minutes of someone doing something careful and kind to my actual face while a flute played softly and my nervous system, for the first time in what I estimate was several months, did not have an agenda.

I want to be clear: I am a fairly sceptical person. I don't believe everything I read. I have opinions about wellness culture and its tendency to monetize basic human rest. But here is what I can tell you honestly: those thirty-seven minutes were better than the two hours of television I watch every night while also looking at my phone. They were better than the ten-minute guided meditation I do irregularly and mostly use to compose to-do lists. They were better than almost anything I scheduled for myself last month.

Where Do You Go After This?

I thought about this while you were on my eye. I thought: this cucumber slice has one job, and then it is finished. There is something almost beautiful about that. Purpose. Completion. Rest.

I hope you were composted. I hope something green is growing from where you went. I hope whoever tends that garden has, at some point, also had someone put cucumber slices on their eyes and thought: oh. This is what it feels like to just be taken care of for a minute.

I'm going to keep booking facials. Partly for the skin benefits. Partly for the steam and the careful hands and the professional who asks how you're doing and actually pauses to hear the answer. But also, a little bit, for you.

With genuine gratitude and mild philosophical curiosity,
A regular client, Scarborough, ON