Some eyes are home, some memory— His were both
by Andleep Fatima
When I first met him, his eyes were the dulcet shade of night— dark brown, yet ablaze like embers that refused to die. I used to think the sun set there, dolorously, so the world could rest in. They were made of the hush before rain, a place my soul could rest in. They looked at me like I was something worth knowing, and I— I believed them, of course. But now, those same eyes, once tender, feel like locked doors— still beautiful, but unreachable, like twilight fading beyond the horizon. In my instant of time, brown had already fallen to a reverie, at rest in my eyes. But in the turn of his gaze, it was all brown within my heart that heretofore lies. They are no longer the colour of comfort, but of remembrance. I see them in burnt letters, in coffee gone cold, in every twilight that craves the moon. His eyes were once the brown of beginning, and now they are the place I can never return to, evermore. And yet, even now, I can't unsee the way they once looked at me— as if the whole universe had paused just to let us begin, forevermore.
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