In the Month of May

Why do eyes have to be so damned beautiful? We only use them to see, to take in our world, and yet some of them are so beautiful. They are beautiful in their own ways, some are tragically beautiful, some are mysteriously beautiful. Some eyes have an effect on some people, an effect that will make them fall in love with a person they've never met just from one simple glance.

Your eyes, they are tragically beautiful. They are the one thing about you that does not scream of your outward happiness, your contentful loneliness. They are the one thing that give away your smiles and laughter. Your eyes give you away.

I hope you know that I would do anything to see your eyes shine. They are always glazed over in a futile attempt to hide your past. I would do anything to see that glaze vanish. I would act like an idiot just for you, I'd laugh at all your jokes, I'd let you hold me as long as you wanted to. I was late and yelled at so many times from trying to make your eyes shine.

My heart lived to see you smile as a reflection of me, eyes bright and caring and desperate to see you happy. My eyes gave me away to you, but you always looked away when I let my guard slip around you. You said that you could see my past in my eyes.
You never wanted to think about all of the things done to me, even though you had asked me to tell you so many years ago.

I wanted to see past the guard set up inside of your irises, I wanted to watch your past unfold through your eyes, content and unguarded, staring into mine.
I stayed for so long because I was always waiting to see your eyes clear and calm.

When you smiled at me that one day, and I smiled back, it was something else. Instead of searching your eyes, I had given up, I had given up trying and waiting. I smiled back at you and saw what I had been waiting for. I saw your eyes, so tragically beautiful, unglazed, in every ounce of beauty and history that they truly were. I saw you for who you really were and my heart broke.
You had no idea, but that was the day I fell in love.

From then on, my heart not only lived for your eyes but it breathed for them too. I stopped trying to make them beautiful and only waited. I simply waited and always got what I craved, your eyes, so damned beautiful, smiling back at me.

I had an idea that you somehow felt toward me what I felt for you, through how your eyes suddenly shined, even in the dark of your room when we laid beneath the stars glowing on your ceiling. Your eyes were fixed above, your mouth moving to form perfect words, while mine were fixed on the light shining from your eyes.
I believed then that they were the reason the stars were shining.

Months and months passed. I was by your side, with your hand in mine, through every day of them it seemed. I had watched your eyes glow and glimmer in the darkest of places. I had watched them return to their dull glaze when we weren't alone. My heart broke each time it witnessed your eyes dimming. My mind wondered if the others ever noticed how they changed.
No one but me ever did.

I watched and waited and smiled with you, hand in hand through everything life decided to put us through. I was in love, finally, after years and years of shying away from every chance I had to fall. I stayed through all of the screaming of my heart and my mind, screaming at me to run from your smile and arms. I stayed through and let myself drown in your eyes, the only things keeping my feet still through the conflict inside my body.

I watched and waited and smiled with you until a sunset in June. I was alone, you were with your family across the country. I walked with friends through a glowing field, wishing your hand was in mine. I had missed the call that sent the sounds of ringing echoing through my home.

I returned the missed call when I had reached home.
You were sitting in a hospital bed three thousand miles away, settling into a trance that could send your beautiful glimmering eyes closing for the last time.

My friends and your friends pulled money from savings that had taken years to build up as did I, we bought plane tickets for that night. We left at midnight, four hours after I had returned the call.

You don't have to know that I couldn't sleep the entire flight. You don't have to know that I couldn't stop crying or shaking or worrying. You don't have to know that I was thinking of your eyes the entire time, your eyes that I had fallen in love with, your eyes that changed everything I had thought about love before I met you. Your eyes that changed everything.

They wouldn't let us in when we got there. They said we had to wait, that it was too early in the morning for us to see you. I cried and pleaded with them. It took two hours, but they listened to me when I told them about you and me and everything we had been through.
In reality, they probably thought I was crazy, psychotic.
I was just desperate to see you before your eyes went away.

You smiled when I ran inside. I put my hands on your face, crying silently at how helpless you looked. You ran your hand along my arm, whispering that you were okay, it was okay, that I could stop worrying and crying. I shook my head and held onto you. I refused to let go, I refused to see your eyes grow dim.

They shined the entire time you laid there, so pale and helpless and bruised. I smiled and cried with each word you spoke. I climbed into the bed with you, holding onto you with every ounce of composure and strength left inside me. I wouldn't leave you, even when the nurses came in, I would only get up, keeping my fingers entertwined with yours, my eyes locked onto yours.

I stayed with you for three weeks. You got better, your eyes shining more and more with each day. I stayed even when everyone else left. I cared about nothing left back on the eastern shore. I didn't care that I had only brought clothes for a week, I didn't care that I only had three hundred dollars to last those three weeks. You said to go home, to save my money, but I didn't use it for anything but food. The hospital was my hotel, I got everything there. I stayed until you could sit beside me on the plane that would take us back, refusing to leave until then.

You never got that far though.

You had gotten so much better. Your eyes were shining, your lungs were breathing normally again, you could walk through the halls with me, through the garden outside, if only for a little while. You were almost back to normal, back to your beautiful, shining self, but we learned that your father had died, that your mother wouldn't be able to walk again, and you deteriorated. You fell apart right in front of me. I watched, tried desperately to catch the pieces and put them back together, but they were falling too fast, too haphazardly broken off. I watched and held on to you, your heart, as your grip slowly let go of mine.

It took only two weeks for everything to fall apart. You let go of hope, let go of me. Although you smiled and kept the shine in your eyes. Although I cried and held onto to every last bit of strength if only for you. I kept myself together for you. If I could have, I would have fallen into a million little pieces right beside you. We could have fallen apart together.
I held on if only for your sake.

I watched your eyes fade away, felt your grip weaken, heard your heart slow. I cried and kissed you over and over again, begging you to hold on for me and your mother and your friends and for you and everything that you could be. I felt my heart break into pieces as your eyes turned dull, their shine gone. I cried every last tear I possessed as I felt you give up. I cried as I saw you close your eyes. I cried as I kissed you for the last time.

I cried for days. I cried for you, for your heart, for everything we had lost, everything I had lost. I cried for your broken bones and spirit. I cried for your smile and your fingers entertwined with mine. I cried for every memory we had and every memory that never was. I cried for my broken heart, shaking and rattling around the empty space inside my chest. I cried for you, for us, for everyone and everything.

Mostly, though, I cried for your eyes, your beautifully tragic, tragically beautiful shining eyes. I cried for their glaze and their guard and their brightness, shining brighter than the sun herself. I cried for how they bore into mine when we smiled at each other. I cried for how they made me fall for you. I cried for how they changed everything.
I cried for how goddamned beautiful they were, and still are, behind your closed lids.
I cried until my own eyes were bloodshot and dull and empty.
I cried.