Eyes

This is how I saw it, all in the eyes.

At some point, the words we were saying became meaningless and our communication became based in the occipital. Long stares and belated eye contact were all cryptic signals in our language. Avoidance born in down turned eyelashes and longing in one up and broken glances.

 A wink and I was dunked in ice water. Gasping, starving for air and only tasting the salty, cold sea. A hint of a smile in those mahogany eyes and I knew. And he knew. 

When I thought back, I realized we had always spoken this way. What was it that we couldn't say? Couldn't verbalize? Or what was it that I was afraid to hear?

While we spoke in the normal rhythm to friends and family, to each other the cadence of our eyes was a second language. Something brighter and darker, heavier and lighter, paradox upon paradox of meaning without definition.

But I knew in the war torn part of myself that it was not a language, only a filler for for something we were both searching for. And the haunting seconds where I was lost in another sense was only seconds.

And the sooner I broke the stare, the better.