What large eyes you have, she gasps through her sleep, venturing up from her mattress, shaking sleep off like a dead animal. Her eyes, she’s caught in headlights, the silken deer. I never knew your name, I never knew your name; she cries. If you should go, if you should go now; she still cries. The clockwork of her mind is unravelling, bits and pieces coarse with emotion, and she coughs, plunges out after a steady breathing. This is what happens when she falls into feeling, tries to embrace something greater than her hands.
Those hands, knitting webs of golden thread, all the empty streets, cities full of ravens, silent concrete echoing back while she sings. The siren sitting by her chair in a room damp with heat from a mind, unravelling at the edges. Etching ink into her fingertips, the constant challenge of expression.
What large eyes you have, my beautiful.
What large eyes you have. What will you catch with those ocean depths?
She whispers; I really want to. She repeats herself when nobody watches, shakes beneath stirring blankets, shivers in the warmth of the sun, and seeks the shadows, the unknown, only to steady an unsure heartbeat.
I really want to; she says.
Writing, the words by her, for her, from her, and of her, all new kindled honesty placed on scales; your hands. Her windows, large and bluish-grey, speckled with green and sometimes gold, all open to the world, passers by staring so hard; if they will see her soul? She has no such wishes. A smile, from beneath the ocean all the way up to heaven, this she imagines. This is what she shows her wall, on waking and sitting up, this she shows her closet, on choosing her dress for the day, and this is what her mirror envisions, gathering her up. Her smile, thinking about you telling her of how others might be a little more than curious. And it’s neither glory nor ignorance. Only your ink stains on her skin, her smiling at your silly little games.
What large eyes she has, oh. Oh.
To better catch your heart.