I find your soul, glass eyed and lonely

It’s always about the eyes, they are such hyaline things. Some days my throat is parched, begging me to drink a cup of water. The glass of it always stares back at me, I can feel its grip on my fingers as if it were still sand molting into something else. Something transparent and beautiful and burned, charred to a crisp. A cigarette smoking out the foul odour, I see it in the reflection of my lips. It is the fen of longing— sticky and sweet that meets it.

It is the same when looking at the sclera of your eyes. Life slowly begins to bend and fold like a piece of paper burning in a gentle fire. It shines, starlike until it is gone and the glass of your eyes glimmers in its containment (I watch it all). It is as if you are tucking every moment inside of them. And when our gazes meet, a thrill settles over me. roiling over the possibility that i might somehow in there find your bare-naked soul and everything you’ve kept in it, neatly folded behind the looks you dedicate to memory and experience. My throat begins to close again, behind the immensity of all you’ve contained within you. I know It hurts, I can tell it does. And at this point in time, something smoky and animal-smelling toddles out of you, a deer caught in the headlights. You’ve loved this life with a fleeting intensity so you’ve let your eyes do the terrible thing of remembering,

it consumes every grain of your being in the floodlight that is burning and becoming glass. (a thing that does not lie)

A young woman looks at the camera

Andrea Granata

Grade: 12 / CEGEP I
Lighthouse Christian Academy
Portage La Prairie, MB

“This poem is about the past and it shaping you even though it hurts and burns you into the person you are today. A person that could not be yesterday, a person that could exist without the truth and reality of it all. Which despite of all the fire of its pain, turned you into your purest form. Like a diamond elevated into the light.”

Bio

Andrea Granata is grade 12 Latina teen, who is an avid poetry writer and reader. When she's not reading or writing, she thinks about doing it, usually while scrapbooking or talking to herself on walks. Andrea also enjoys well-written metaphors and hopes her writing can touch the hearts of many.

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