Pupils
What if the black in our eyes
is the center of another galaxy
and the color that explodes out from
the heart of it is only the start
of a new world with new life and
millions of years from now a new
you and a new me will start over
fresh and find each other sooner and
fall in love faster and look up
to the perfect black of the night
sky and marvel at the uncountable
stars and the way we will wish upon
them. I wonder sometimes, if the
we’s that found each other in
the dark center of the dark
universe that lives inside our eyes
were different from us, were they
more? Did they stumble upon each
other and in the blackness that they
thought would never fall away, worship
each other like gods and carve
their faces out of the stone walls
that bounced back the heat as they
slowly discovered fire? Were they
silent when they met, did they not understand
that their lips moved and their jaws hinged
and their tongues knew the choreography
for speech and song and even the most
delicate whisper? What would they say
with only tiny movements of dim eyes
across those first fires when their voices
had not yet realized themselves? I
believe, as naive as it may be, that
the very first words they found were
I Love You because they knew without a
shadow of a doubt, a lingering hesitancy
that without each other the dark would
be darker and the cold colder and
they would run out of answers to all
of the questions the silence planted
in them. To be there on that first
discovery, to watch those lips form
the words. Would they, would we say them like a
prayer? Would we close our eyes
in reverence as we uttered them, and
if we did would the universe living
inside those very eyes go dark
forever? If each set of eyes
holds its own galaxy, I am staggered
to think of how many yous, are being
loved intensely, by how many mes
at this exact and present moment.
I can only hope and believe and
offer my I Love Yous as a prayer
to you, that the eyes that are holding
all we know and cherish, will never
close, and stare out into their own
darkness, forever.
-Tyler Knott Gregson-
