Real Eyes

So, going to Juniper made me realize that a bunch of the little random scraps of writing I had laying around could actually become poetry or spoken word (which I absolutely love). I wrote this a couple of nights ago with the intention of it being a spoken word, so excuse random run-on sentences and such. Hope you enjoy it!

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There’s that moment when you close your eyes that you feel anything is possible.

When your eyes are closed it’s possible to be loved, because you can’t see anything that can hurt you. When your eyes are closed, you are under the illusion that the whole world has darkened with you and no one can see you. Sometimes it feels like you can only be loved when they can’t see you.

If I closed my eyes for just a second, maybe I could believe that you would love me or I would love you back. Maybe we only loved behind our lids, not our lips. Not with our tongues, but with our time. And the time it takes to open your eyes is the equivalent to the sound of a heart breaking and each lash that parts is a ventricle that pushes through and sets a crack right here, right where my heart strings used to strum for you.

But that was only behind my eyes.

Sometimes I wish I could go blind so I could live forever behind my eyes. So I would keep you with me in my irises and each morning that I wake, you would be my sunrises. If you lived behind my eyes forever the pain would be more real because you would literally be creating my tears. And each drop would come from your hands, the sweat and sludge that it takes to build a lasting foundation for a relationship… all behind my eyes.

But I fear that if I go blind, it will be all I know. And those realities of us, you, and me would become average and mundane. The honeymoon period would wax and wane and eventually I would let heartbreak enter my tears and negativity would be prescribed just to keep me in check. Because being in pain can be numbingly wonderful and living like that forever is like the high I never asked for.

I never asked for a fake life that would turn into my only life, just something I could keep in my back pocket for days where the world wants to play with my feelings like a fat kid testing the patience of a swing set. Or a sailboat racing with an ocean liner – something so improbable and dangerous that I could open my eyes when it became too scary for me to see.

All I wanted was a life behind my lids that would make the one I have not seem so bad. And I gave it all I had – all skin and bones – to a scene behind a flap of skin. Maybe no one is cut out to win in a love that doesn’t exist but only thrives on tears and lies and perspiration prescribed.

Maybe it was you who was blocking my view, but I can’t see that anymore. Nothing is real anymore.