She locked eyes with him across the room. How could eyes so young hold such fear and doubt?
They only stood a rooms width apart from each other, but by looking into those haunted eyes, it might have well have been a canyon between them.
Those eyes were eyes of someone who loved and felt so much once. Now, they are like a hollow shell. Too scared to open up again and too scared that they might never believe again.
They are like a tentative heart afraid of being broken.
He looks at the world with the mistrust of someone who has been burned to many times before. The childlike innocence and faith has been stolen from him too soon.
She wants to reach out to him but there is something in her way. There is a cage between them. A cage he fashioned for himself, and around himself, so to try to protect himself. But what he is not aware of is the fact that this cage-built from too many years of betrayals and tears- this cage- the one he believes is keeping him safe from pain- is really only trapping him.
It is trapping him in now-darkened memories. It is trapping him in his own pain, and grief, and misery.
He is too afraid to open himself up for fear of more of the same.
He refuses to try because every time he has reached out, he has been slapped in the face.
Her heart breaks at the sight of him. Dull, gaunt face with dull lifeless eyes.
They used to sparkle and now they can't even reach a shine.
