The Thing About His Eyes by Vinette Kooger

The thing about his eyes is that they were never the same twice. I’d stared into his so long and so intently, I ought to have learned them, but I hadn’t. I was constantly caught off guard. The way his skin crinkled at the corners when he smiled, just a tiny bit. The way I could never be truly angry with him. The way his eyes were a constant change. They danced, but a new dance every day. The way he could say in an instant, with his eyes, what would take me several lifetimes. His eyes were more alive than most people’s whole bodies. They were ever-stirring, but always came back home to rest on mine. At the end of the day, they belonged on me.

When I had nothing to do but smile, his eyes taught me that I could laugh. His eyes have the most beautiful laugh. They hold mine, for the briefest of moments, and then toss themselves upward to laugh at the sky for having such a monotonous shade of blue. His eyes were oceanic, crystalline storms. Lovely.

"His Eyes?" (photo by Flickr user Carlee Ross)

While I sat, studying his eyes, the sun crept up one side of his face and down the other. I felt comfortable and sleepy. I sensed his eyes on my face, and his gaze warmed me in the chill. Everything he saw, he awakened. The sky, winter, me. The idea of a drawing of him was laughable. He was so alive.

Nevertheless, I sketched his eyes over and over and over again, realizing each time I’d missed some coy little ripple lying far within them. With each stroke, I sank deeper. It happened just as his eyes were becoming a familiar part of me, just as I was settling in, getting comfortable with the scratching of my pencil and the softness of the air. A ladybug crept lazily across the ripped fringe on the knee of my jeans. The sun was setting, the dancing frost patterns on the window were melting, and the ladybug took off, buzzing and jubilant into the sky. I felt something new, something that whisked me off into an entirely new everything. His eyes were smiling at the ladybug, somewhere far in the distance, but I hardly noticed.

He was holding my hand.

As his fingers closed around mine, they fit perfectly into each other like they had already decided where they wanted to live for forever. Like they were a long-awaited visitor, a friend I hadn’t been expecting for quite some time, a pleasant little surprise. At the same time, I felt like we’d been this way throughout ages. Like reaching your arm beneath your bed and pulling out a button from an old coat that still smells like someone you’ve loved. The thick feeling in your chest of remembering and joy and tears all at the same time, because you have something of theirs that will never leave.

We will be that way forever. That’s the thing about his hands.

–

Vinette Kooger is 15 years of age and lives in Canada, land of the beaver pelt and sugar pie. Nothing overly fascinating has ever happened to her, therefore there’s not much to put in this biography. However, she does have a blog at myawkwardstage.blogspot.com.