in your eyes made holy
Your eyes are closed when I see you for the first time, the shadows underneath them deeper than anything I have seen. You lean against that hideous cabinet in my living room, grey-veined hands clutching aged wood like it’s all that’s keeping you alive. It might as well be—your eyes are closed, but I can see you’re exhausted.
I don’t know what you’re doing here in my house, or even who you are. You’re not one of them, smoke-hued and wine-drenched, so I should know your name. But I don’t.
The next time I see you, your eyes will be open so wide I will forget they were ever closed, forget they ever could be.
***
You’re exhausted, I tell you. You know this, you knew even before the other five times I told you, but I tell you anyway. You’re tired, there’s nothing left.
Of course I am, you smile at me, and I can’t see your eyes today. It’s an exhausting business.
And it is—I know it is. I pick at the peeling plaster on the wall and keep my eyes on your shoulder, but I still can’t get away from your not seeing me. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to.
Of course it’s exhausting, all this, this creating business, this making business—breathing stars and birthing voids, it’s got to hurt, hurt like nothing ever can—and it’s a wonder you’re even standing.
You are, though; still against those stained wooden doors, still scoring marks in the grey-brown. I look up, up up up, at you—and maybe I shouldn’t (I can already smell the blood), maybe I really really shouldn’t, but now I’m looking at you and now I’ve seen you and now I can’t stop.
I can’t stop, even as the blood drips down, and your hair, it’s spun of time and coral, your skin chiselled from deep green moss and the soft velvet of space, supernovas for fingernails and gemstones in your knuckles, your mouth a constellation, and your eyes, your eyes—
The room fills with blood before long, and everything is painted red, and I drown in it and I am relieved. At least that fucking cabinet’s gone.
***
The cabinet’s not gone.
The next time I come home, knocking on my own door, tired, tired-er than I have been in a while (though not as much as you, never as much as you), it’s still right there.
Scratch marks and burn marks, the faintest bits of rusty brown in the corners—but it’s still right there. I wish it wasn’t. I wish I could tear it apart, pull the door off its creaky hinges, punch through the rotting wood like so much wet paper. And I could, I could—but the wind is rushing in my ears and my hands are in my pockets, and I can’t be much bothered to lift them up.
Next time, maybe.
***
The cabinet’s not gone.
It’s next time, now, another turn of the wheel, the next piece of paper, the newest angle the clock-hand has to offer. It’s next time and the cabinet’s not gone.
The wood is cold against my fingers.
***
The cabinet’s not gone—but neither are you, this time, this day, this point in the graph. Neither are you; in fact, here you are, in front of me, tears shining on your lips. I almost smile.
You’re gone before I blink my eyes.
***
When the cabinet goes up in flames, when the room fills with black smoke, when the grooves in the wood fade away forever, when the trees outside sway in the grey wind, when the floorboards creak and groan and fall apart, when the roof crashes down soundlessly, when the picture on the wall shrivels in the heat, when my hands break out in blisters, when the clouds hurry away in anticipation of the greater clouds that will billow from the house, when the birds scream themselves stupid with terror, when the foxes streak through the woods away from this house, away away away,
(Art: Fire at Sea, 1835, by J.M.W. Turner)
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