The Bluest Eye

The eyes are the windows of the soul. At least that is what Renee had always heard. The eyes tell you so much. They tell you about the person’s most immediate emotions. Red rimmed and full of tears they speak of either sadness or joy. A faraway look bespoke of memories of the past or plans of the future. And twinkling eyes told you of great happiness or anticipation or of lust or anger.

Brown eyes are warm, like a glass of brandy. Green eyes are the eyes of envy. Hazel eyes remind us of coffee or of summer earth with green things growing proudly in the sun. Grey eyes are stormy. And blue eyes….oh yes, blue eyes can be cold or hot, the eyes of heaven and hell, cutting you to the bone or melting your very soul.

His blue eyes are all those things at once. How could it be possible that these blue eyes could hold every emotion? Was it because they had seen so much? Oddly, that was the first reason that popped into her mind as she looked into his eyes, that he had seen the world change so much since the time he was made as he is now. He had seen America change from the divided nation it once was into the brave new world it is now. Was it because he had endured such sadness? Yes, he had so much loss, so much loneliness, and so much savagery he had seen and been a part of in his long existence.

Would she shrink away if she knew just how savage he had been? Would she look at him, as she did now, with wonder and compassion and yes, passion, if she knew the bloody things he’d been involved in and with? Or would she want to be away from him, frightened, disgusted. Would all of them feel this way if they knew just how precisely brutal they all had been and could be still? Or would she accept all of these things, as easily as she had accepted his hand as they walked together under the still dark night with all its sacredness and horrors?

She liked looking in his eyes, light when they were in the world of light, cobalt, like blue print blue in the shadows, deepening to black in the darkness they now traveled in. He was all these things, angel and demon, sensualist and saint, day dream and nightmare. He had never loved this existence and sometimes even loathed it. But there were a few things he liked about this moment in his existence, and this was one of them, that stolen moment when he would look at her and she at him and she would, without a spoken word, tell him exactly what would happen this evening.

No two were alike, they all needed him and he they for different reasons. Renee needed something very simple and very basic from him now. She stopped him and he began to lower himself to the ground, pulling her down to rest beside him. He pushed her hair away from her face as she settled against him, her hand on his silent chest. It moved up to this neck where there was no pulse and her fingers slid into his clean dark hair and pulled his beautiful heart shaped face down to her. He hesitated just for a moment….and lowered his head to her.

Good Night Renee