Little Dreamer's Eyes

I feel as if I'm surrounded by glass. Everyone looking in. Everyone judging and watching.

Waiting.

Waiting to see what I will do. Tell me why I have done it.

The glass is not clear on my side. It is coated with tarnished silver forcing me to stare back at myself when I try to see out.

What do I see?

Do I like what I see?

What do you see?

Do you like what you see?

Interesting that we have different views, while mine is a mirror and yours is clear.

Or is it you that should be looking in the mirror?

No, it is me.

I'm looking at you, but I can't see you. I know you're there. I hear your voice. I understand your words. My eyes are clouded with tears.

As fast as I wipe them away they return like frosted glass letting in enough light to remind me of your shadow in front of me, yet all detail of you and who you are is gone.

I can't see you anymore.

If I let the tears well up in my eyes without brushing them away, will they fall? Will they run down my cheek and give me the view of you I've been fighting to see? I can't stop wiping them because I don't want you to see me cry. I want to see you. How can I clear my eyes to see you without you watching the tears fall?

I can't.

So you will need to watch me cry so that I, in turn, can watch you looking at me.

It starts in the middle of your body. Your core is a small seed that grows and spins as it makes it's way through your veins and out through your fingertips. Your ears warm. Your eyes widen. Your throat tightens as you breathe deep. Air from your lungs fills your chest and gets caught on the back of your tongue as you can practically taste the emotion.

Your heart races as you feel it through to your back and echoing down the front of the entire left side of you. It meets the energy that came from deep within at your fingers and it escapes. Flowing out of you and away as you calm and the butterfies fade back to the sky and fly away from you. All of that emotion fills you inside until it has no place to go. It reaches your mouth as you have no words to describe the way you feel...

...and you smile.

It's early.

Quiet.

The birds outside with no cars passing by to distract my thoughts. The sun hasn't risen to distract my vision. The day hasn't begun, yet I am here. I feel like I have something to say. Something to tell you. Something to tell myself.

But the words are not with me.

They are not organized in any fashion to help me describe how I feel or what I think. I scramble to put them in an order that will make my thoughts feel useful yet they are sitting strewn about my mind.

The way you left them.

I can't concentrate. I can't focus. I feel as though I'm making attempts to interpret another language. One you are speaking. One I don't understand.

And I stare.

For lack of a constructive option, I stare and wait as if it will change on it's own, but I know it will not. I need to pick up the pieces and try to put them together, with or without your help. With or without your answers. It may take longer on my own, but it will be more satisfying that you left me to figure it out by myself because once I have everything in place it will be a place that you did not invade to get me there.

Despite the fact that you intruded on my thoughts to make that mess. Despite the fact that I tried to reach for the pieces before they landed scattered and out of sorts. I will be busy today.

Picking them up.

Putting them in place. Making a pattern that perhaps you'll no longer understand if you attempt to come back to check on your damage. A pattern only I understand.

Because only I need to.

I thought I was inspired, but I'm not. How very wrong I was...

Let go of me.

As hard as I try I cannot pry you from me. Your grip is so tight. So intentional. So invasive. Yet what you grip me with is not your hand at all.

It is your silence.

Your silence won't let me free myself of the confusion. It screams loud at me with a gesture that you need to be heard. Silently. Making no sense of it for me. Giving no answers. All the while you are so silent that I feel like you can hear me. I know that you can't. I know that you won't.

But you won't let go.

The only way you can flee and release me from this frustration is to speak. To give me words. To understand and allow me the same. I have questions which, once answered, will carry me away from this with them. They are the key to unlock this cuff on my wrist that I desperately want to remove.

Open your hand.

Not only to free me of your quiet, but to expose the lines in your palm which make you human. Lines which trail on your skin as your veins carry life through you. Or do you not have compassion? Will you deny me peace in an effort to have the last word?

You have.

Your silence perpetuates everything around it.

It is unnecessary. Unhealthy. Unwanted.

It is unkind.

As I sleep in the sound moments before I'm toggled from my involuntary dreaming thoughts, I cannot feel consciously. Asleep and dreaming with no control over your thoughts and no control over when they will end or begin, I am free from the desire to change them. To edit them. To embelish them. They are pure and real.

As I begin to wake and my eyes are still closed there is always a moment that I don't want to open them. I want to fall back to sleep. Not from exhaustion. Not due to wanting to avoid the day. Purely to go back to that place where I can finish a thought uninterrupted. As I lay with my eyes closed I breathe deep in an effort to retreat back to the cocoon under the covers. In the warmth. In the dark.

Inevitably my eyes open. Immediately thoughts of the day fill my head of where to go, what to do, what was said and what wasn't, what should be and what isn't. Regrets and goals.

And I shut them.

Still thinking, trying to pretend I am not awake all the while I am and it's here. The thought of you. Again. I hear your voice. I hear the words you spoke to me when I listened so intently to every syllable as if they were sounds I had never heard before. As if what you were saying was to be cherished, savored. As if how you said it was unique to they way they had ever been said to me before. Simple words. Somehow they were magical coming from you.

And I open them.

I stare. I blink slowly. I curl into the blankets for comfort like a hug as if you are there. As if you have wrapped yourself around me to remind me why you're here. Eyes open I again breath deep, I hear your voice and I look down just enough to keep them open but not focus on anything and I see your face as you fall silent. You are smiling at me. You are looking into my eyes as if you just listened to what I said. As if we are still talking but yet it is silent. And you are not here.

It is just me.

I turn over to look where you used to be and I think of those who have been there since. Those I thought I loved. Those you never knew. Those who could not compare no matter how hard I tried to justify that you were gone and they had a right to be there. No one had the same rights as you. The same rights that filled me with the comfort of how it felt to see you in the morning. Looking at me from the other pillow that now lies empty.

There are days that I look at the pillow next to mine and remember the years I spent with someone who would never compare to you next to me. Someone who never made me anticipate opening my eyes in the early sun to see his face waiting for mine. Someone who was nothing like you. Who should have been. Who left me with hate. Who left me alone to wake on these days to open my eyes and remember a time before him. A time with you.

Sometimes I take the pillow and slide it under mine. I hold it. I curl up to it with the thoughts of the naive young girl I was when I thought you would always be nestled in it.

Your eyes closed.

Dreaming.

Next to me.

When you first came into my life, I knew you, but I couldn't see you. Always there with me as I went through my days. My emotions. My thoughts. You could not hear my thoughts and you could not look at my face to know how I felt by the fear in my eyes. But you were there.

You were alone yet safe from the world I faced. A world that would eventually turn into a struggle for you to understand. A world I welcomed you into with open arms. Did you have thoughts? What was it like before you entered my world? Was it calm?

When I first saw you it was not in person. It was a picture. Black and white with grain which encouraged me to squint to take a closer look. With the image close to my face, I looked at yours. How your eyes were spaced from your nose. The curve of your ear. The mouth which I knew would eventually speak words of love. Your fingers were open and relaxed. I could tell you felt safe before you entered my world. You were like me. We would meet and instantly feel a connection. A trust. We could do anything together, undefeated.

And then one day, before we met, you stopped breathing. I felt helpless when I found I was not able to be there for you. You were in a world which had not yet collided with mine. You were supposed to be safe, but we could not control the impact of life, even together. Had I lost you, I would be lost myself.

When we met, still affected by this struggle you made into my world, you were different. You weren't who I saw in the picture. You were tense. Your fists clenched. Your tears rolled down your cheeks as you arched your back in discomfort with what being on this side of life has handed you. With your red face and your unheard thoughts you cried for my help as I did what I could to understand all I needed to know to give you comfort here with me.

I looked at your open eyes and your mouth which longed just for one large gulp. The tube upon my finger facilitating the only nurishment you could swallow was not enough. Where was that child in the picture? This was not you. Do you remember yourself then? When you could move within your small space of life before entering this large world only to find when you got here that your movements were still confined.

When you speak, do you feel heard? I hear you. When you laugh you are like any other child. When you think, you are like any other child. When you cry, you are like any other child.

But when you attempt to achieve the independence you deserve, you struggle unlike most other children. So young for such a struggle. So young to have thoughts of doubt or frustration. I have lived my years to have my thoughts evolve, you have lived such a short time, yet face difficulty in even the smallest task.

You are beautiful. Your thoughts are heard here. I could not hear them before I met you. Your smile brings me warmth, I could not see it before I looked at your face with your nose touching mine. When you hold my hand I am thankful that you are here to feel as I grasp your palm giving you the assurance that I will not let you fall...and if you do I will pick you right back up. Physically. Emotionally.

Every breath of life you take now makes up for the few you lost. It makes up for the times I held my breath waiting for answers. And when you exhale I do as well, because we are in this together. Two by two. We look at that faded image as it's yellowed and symbolizing that the person in that picture is gone. Who was that person? I don't need to know.

I've been blessed everyday since I met you and wouldn't change anything about you. You are my angel.

You are perfect.

You are my child.

Someplace to be in peace. Where thoughts are judged in silence. No strokes to the keyboard pecking away at my impression of my world. A place I can find peace in my thoughts and despite anyone's interest, despite anyone's opinion I am here alone.

Alone has always been a fear of mine and yet here I run to it like shelter from chaos. Where I came from was my nest. My thoughts. The place I could go to vent from the world with or without opinion. With or without support. With or without confrontation. No longer.

In a place I call mine that I retreat from the rest of the world, all the while wanting to be heard, I have chosen to run from it too. My conscience is not free there. My thoughts are judged by those who choose to voice them loudly. Strongly. With force and the confidence that they have a place in my world.

I am in the open. Exposed. As I should be in life. As I am in life. As I will continue to be here.

Here I do not welcome your opinion. I don't care if you are heard. Here is where I want to be heard. Where I find a different purpose than hiding on paper yet can control my surroundings as I speak my point of view.

Voyeurism is human. It's curiosity. I enjoy when I watch and keep to myself as much as I enjoy to participate in someone else's thoughts and invitations to contribute.

There are no invitations here.

Voyeurism is welcome. Opinions are not. There is a time and a place for an unwanted opinion and I have learned that if I open the door to let people in I should expected unwanted visitors.

This door is not open but I will be sure to pull back the curtain on the window.