Blank Spaces

Caim

And in all the hours in between, when mine close, i always, always; come back to your eyes. Dizzy and drunk on pain; of course alcohol because it dulls it, that sharp blue still cuts through the haze and the dreams and the hurt. With traces of green and amber, like a draught of winter hemlock. I surrender to the sleep just so that I can gaze upon them.

So cold that day. The air, your eyes... even as I burned the world down around me; my heart was freezing. Never again would I see them so close to my own as our lips press'd firmly as if to never come apart. It's cold, and the world is burning; still I can only think of your eyes. Sleep is calling me back to your stare.

Time has seemed to come to a halt around me. A dark impenetrable bubble. Nothing moving, nothing growing, a contention of nothing vs. nothingness. A stagnation that penetrated so deep that it seemed as if it would creep in and steal my very memories themselves. Creeping, and winding deeper still, searching, thieving.

Robbing me of your touch; still lingering on my rough and jagg'd nerves, your scent that clung so loftly around my being; and every place we went or thing you touched. Now it was here for your eyes. So that my dreams may no longer drink upon them. You wicked thief. Djinn. Demon. The sound of heavy wings.

Can you not but leave me this? These pools of razor blues and hemlock greens wrapped in amber; so that i might drown in them? If you must take something, take the cold! Take the burning world! Take my heart....

The thief looked at the cold; at the burning world, releasing disjuncted sighs as it stirred in its own darkness. As if to indicate their worth was not enough. Slowly a dark tendril like finger moved gently towards my chest then stopped. The darkness moved in languish and tilted down empathetically. As if to denote a pity that could only mean, there was nothing left therein.

It looked back and forth between the radiant pools of your eyes and the spindly undulating dark finger at my breast. Then slowly, the long thin needle of ink retreated back into the dark, surrendering. Staring back into me one last time with a sorrow, so deep, that its particular shade of darkness became more saturated.

I realized, as it was leaving, it stole the last of the light around me. Leaving me your eyes; with no way to see them. A cruel mercy. Perhaps. A misfortunate boon. Certainly. I think? Maybe it just didn't want to leave empty-handed. The rest pure coincidence. A poor thief and poorer still samaritan.

Alone in thiefly darkness; want for your eyes, I sit. Time seems to stretch on into forever in that darkness. The cold, the burning world; both gone. Swallowed up by it's completeness. Even the presence of the thief, vanished. Not until i felt the brush of wings did i come to attention.

Before me, sat a tiny, brilliantly white, little bird. It sat perched upon your lashes. Tilting its head in curiousity at me. "Hello you infinitesimal thing." I thought to myself. Feeling that it might be lost, I extended my index finger towards it... flitting from the edges of your lash to my digit. It sat. Looking back and forth between me and your eyes.

It was warm. What a strange little thing. Cocking its head; It took to flight, circling around me several times before coming to a stop. There, It fluttered, flapping its tiny brilliantly white little wings, right in front of my chest at the very spot the thief had pitied. Looking at me then gently pressing its beak against the darkness in front of it.

I opened my eyes. They had been closed the whole time. The cold had returned, but i did not feel it. The burning world had returned, but where there had been ember, Growth. A hedge of winter hemlocks. And the thief. Now unmasked by opening my eyes. Looking back at me with razor blues, traces of green and amber. You were the thief all along.

A miniscule; brilliantly white, little bird flapping between us. And me, surrounded by ephemeral circles of the same hue. Then chirping, my strange little companion through the darkness, flew away.