With Open Eyes

    Lindsay killilea knudtson

 

 

 

      Sometimes when it is too late you sit up and you run the pink of your tongue along the scabbed center of your lower lip, press your tongue against your swollen gums.   And the moon peeks in through the curtains.  And it glints off the broken glass, turning the cracks to silver.  And the eyes watch you from somewhere in the darkness of the room, and you stare back, quietly, at those eyes, and as you stare into each other’s eyes, you begin to wonder why you are sitting there, in that worn-out chair, when it is so late, when the rest of the world is sleeping, when you should be sleeping too, because you are tired and because you have been so tired for weeks.  But it is too early to be up and too late to try and sleep, and you are sure that the lack of sleep is starting to tip the scale. 

 

      They tell you that it is okay.  They tell you that people are beautiful when they just are what they are, and they think you are beautiful, that you are the most beautiful when you are sitting there, wrapped in the night.  When your hair drifts down and aches against your shoulders.  When everything is still.  And you become conscious of the bareness of your skin and of your whole self because you want to think that you are beautiful too, but you can’t and you don’t know how, because your eyes feel just as scabbed as your lips, and your gums bleed, and you feel that you have never truly been allowed to see.  And the eyes burn and you see it and you feel it, that burn, all the way from the tops of your swollen breasts to your toes, and you feel it creeping in the dark and you are sure they must have placed some kind of insect under your skin, because when you sit down you feel sick and you feel it against your ribs.  You feel the creeping inside.  And you are sure it is swallowing the life from within you. 

 

      They tell you that it is okay to be sad.  They tell you that sadness is becoming, but you didn’t think you were all that sad and now you are confused and the confusion settles around your hips and around your ankles, and now you are unsure because maybe you are sad and maybe you just never knew what it meant to be sad.  Maybe your scabbed lips bleed sad, and maybe if you just sit and let them bleed you will know how deep this feeling runs, because if sadness is just the absence of happiness and you can never be happy without being sad and you can never feel sadness without joy, then maybe everyone is sad.  Maybe you are sad, and maybe they are right.  You don’t understand how someone so sad, so tired, could be beautiful, and it makes your head pound and it makes your temples throb.

 

      They tell you that it is okay to wonder.  They tell you that you are not the only one who wonders what it is like to sit and just bleed, bleed until everyone has forgotten everything.  The eyes flicker, there, in the dark, because they want you to see them and they want you to feel them.  But the blood is moving slower and you aren’t really sure what you should, or shouldn’t do.  They can only give you the night but you want to be more than half of a whole, so you know that you need more, more than the flutter against your ribs.  The emptiness thuds in the back of your throat and it swells there because there is no more room in your gut, and it tastes like bitter and like heat and it makes you want to vomit, but at this moment you can’t remember what good tastes like and you start to think that maybe nothing tastes good and that everything tastes like bitter and that everything smells like heat, and that you will always feel like you have to vomit.

 

      The eyes pull back, and you think, for a moment, that they want you to follow them, but they tell you it is okay to find your own way.  And you look through the gap in the curtains, past the cracked glass, and you see that the stars have come out to meet the moon and now everything is silver, silver and black, and you push yourself up and out of that old chair because everything seems possible at night and because you think you have found a familiar face, someone who knows your skeletons, who understands the human self and the life that will pour into all of those unknown places.  But you are frustrated, and you place your hand against your lower back because it aches there.  Your skin is warm and dry and bare, and your feel alone and your skin feels tight and you want to escape from it but you can’t.

 

      But the eyes have been there since you were young.  They watched you, told you of the things you could not see during the day and of the things you could not feel in the light, and as you walked down the empty halls at night, and pressed your face against the glass, you were never afraid of the dark until you realized it was only dark because you kept your eyes shut. Your naked hand moves to rest below the curve of your abdomen and you realize that your eyes are still shut and your face is pressed against the screen, pointed toward the stars.  The questions are still complicated but there’s a light in the sky and you open the window because now you have something to lose.

 

      “Who knew,” you say. “Who knew.”