Lonely Eyes

           There were two people at the beginning of time- a man and a woman. They were cold to each other. They slept on opposite sides of the creek and each one of them scavenged for food on their own. There was an abundance of plants and animals that they could choose from. Although they were young, they suffered. They knew no other life but this one. They settled in this lonely paradise, accepting it as their only reality. They didn’t communicate with each other because they were too scared to. People are wild and unpredictable. They can be boiling teakettles one day and sanguine sloths the next. It is indisputably easier to avoid the complexities of human nature entirely.

            One day, a heavy storm hit the land, and the man and woman huddled together beneath the leafiest tree they could find. The man took the woman’s hand and breathed on it, making it warm. They looked into each other’s eyes but didn’t talk. Eyes are powerful. The way the iris gets larger or smaller, the tint of colour around a ball of blackness. It tells stories if you just look into it long enough. People are terrified of constant eye contact. They don’t trust others enough to share such an intimate part of themselves. But they can share their hands and lips and chins. Anything but the eyes.

            The eye contact between the man and woman was so strong and magical that it became painful. Lightning struck the tree and a heavy branch hit the ground, barely scraping the woman’s leg. The man picked her up and dashed through the torrential rain, taking her to a cave, where they slept for the night.

            The next morning, sunlight streamed in through a small opening in the cave. The man and woman had their arms wrapped around each other because it kept them warm. The woman opened her eyes and was horrified with what she saw. The man had scooped out his eyes, and had left them in her hand. She stared at his blank face, the blood dried up around the eye sockets. He didn’t say anything because he could only talk with his eyes. He took her hand in his and smiled. She led him out of the cave and prepared a wild salad for him. Her heart sunk a bit as she saw him stumble over weeds and brushes. He couldn’t even walk on his own. She held his eyes in her hands and cried. But she promised to herself that she would take care of him for as long as she lived.

            He trusted her for no good reason at all. Just desperation and selfishness. He was so greedy that he wanted her to see things through his eyes. Although he wouldn’t admit it, he was so deeply and foolishly in love that he was willing to do anything to make her stay, to make her come closer and never leave. He abandoned his eyesight and all the pain that came with it, all his sorrows and phobias and twisted philosophies. He hoped that she would take her eyes out and replace them with his, so that she could see things just how he saw them. But she kept them in her hand. She was overworked, bored of taking care of him like a child. She became so angry that she threw his eyes into the creek, frustrated at the selfishness of man.

            Then she took her own eyes out, as she couldn’t deal with the guilt of having thrown away the man’s soul. They were both blind, trying to find comfort in each other's arms, but they could never reach the prime intimacy of eye contact, of sharing a romantic glance, a peek into the soul. The only life they knew was not that of the island- of the trees and lonely hunts and nights spent alone under the stars. The only life they knew now was that they had each other.

            The man and woman were such cowards that they were too scared to trust one another when they had the choice to. The trust was forced upon them. The love came along with it. They blindly scavenged for edible plants during the day and kept each other warm at night. This must have been the origin of love- the validation that love is blind.