Little Dreamer's Eyes

You may be younger than me, more naive, with less self control, but I will always respect you enough to give you the benefit of the doubt. Each day I will trust you and do what I can to help you through to tomorrow. I know you respect me, no matter what words you aim in my direction that might lead me to question your heart.

But there is no question.

You know I am here for you and I know you are there for me. I will not lose my respect for you and I will always give you an opportunity to do better.

I love you.

We will be fine...hang in there.

Puddled up around my eyelashes, my tears collect before they stream down my face. They catch the corner of my mouth on their way to my neck where they pool at my collar. Illuminated in the light, they rest before they begin to dry and turn dull against my skin, tightening it, leaving the salt behind as an impression of my emotions for you to see.

I begin to open my lips to speak as one dangles from the top and misses the bottom as it runs into my mouth and I lick it off with my tongue. I can taste my emotion and you can see it in my eyes.

You kissed me goodbye.

And you could taste it too.

Everyday I wake you up. Your hair twisted and spiked from the sweat on your pillow. Lines down the side of your face. Your back arched with your shoulder tilted to one side.

You open your eyes and my face is the first that you see for the day. I smile at you and sometimes talk to you in that baby voice that you're growing out of oh so fast. Too fast.

You reach your hands above you and bend your knees and roll to the side as if to tell me to leave you be. Five more minutes.

Were you dreaming?

Sometimes I ask but I usually get a grunt of a response as I pick you up and place you upright to get ready for the day. I put on your school clothes and straighten your glasses. I put your wild hair into place and groom you for your trip on the bus where you'll win over hearts and smile at strangers out the window.

So sweet. Your little voice. Your grown up thoughts. Your opinions that I no longer influence. I'm so proud of you and how you go about your day touching the lives of those you meet, never realizing the impact you have.

Never realizing how you've touched my life in a way that I could never have imagined.

I could barely see you go as the rain fell down my cheeks, glistening off my collarbone, soaking into my shirt. I could taste the salt in the rain as it stuck to my lips, reminding me it was tears I had licked as I closed my mouth and clenched my jaw.

I just stood there.

Screaming inside and losing the words I needed to tell you how I felt. I watched you walk away with the back of your jacket protecting you from the cold drops as they pooled in the creases around the collar. You kept walking as I was there alone, cold and confused. I waited for you to look back.

You never did.

I think I know.

I say I know.

I believe I know.

Then there are brief moments where I think maybe I don't know. There's nothing wrong. Everything's fine. I am not sad and then the possibility that there is no place to go but down, if not up, surfaces.

And suddenly I feel doubt.

I ask questions that need not be asked. I ask questions that have already been answered. I look too far ahead or too far back for this fleeting moment when I just do not know. I want to know. Maybe I say I know because I want to. Maybe I believe I know because I'm trying to convince myself.

Maybe I need to be convinced.

How disappointing it is to realize that maybe I don't know. Maybe all I know is that I feel doubt and the only way I can defeat the doubt is to challenge it by looking it in the face and telling it that I know. That I do not doubt. That I am stronger than doubt and knowing is what makes me stronger.

But that would be only if I knew, without a shadow of a doubt.

I see you and you look better than me. Your hair is longer. Your legs are longer. Your voice is perfect. Your husband is better than mine ever was. Your children can do more than mine. You're a better cook, a better wife, a better friend, a better hostess.

You know this.

Your luck is better. Your job is better. Your parents are better. Your car is better. You have better taste in music, in clothing, in decor. Your house is cleaner. Your faith is better. Your mood is better. You are happier. You feel more love. You feel more respect. You feel more confident.

I see this.

I see this because it is all that you show me. It is all that you show anyone. Including yourself. No one really knows you. How you feel. What you see. What you hear. If you're truly happy.

I can see through you, yet I stop at your heart where you are just like anyone else. I wish that you would stop there sometime too.

It would make you better.

My face lit by the reflection of your words, smiling, knowing you are reading at the same time.

Silently.

Reading together yet so far apart, with our own lights glowing over our shoulders.

And I turn out my light and say goodnight without you ever hearing my voice, as you are left there reading my words without me.

Smiling.

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.