Silver-Eyes

This must be by design. As if your soul touched my engine and turned the wheel of my car to this specific spot—our synchronicity should be unnatural and unsettling, but I find myself unsurprised by this coincidence. You are tethered to me, and trying to guide me home.

I reach into my pocket and re-discover the worn photograph I have carried with me all these years. It shows me a family in a sea of crumpled wrapping paper. A woman with deep grooves carved into her forehead, the stress of long hours scarring her face—a young girl with sickness dulling her eyes and muting her excitement—a boy I have not seen in many years, who plucks a strange, deep chord in my heartstrings. Regretfully, I notice his thinly veiled dissatisfaction as he unwraps his gifts.

I am intimate with his soul yet distant as a stranger. I wouldn’t have recognized him if not for some unmistakable features, like the snow-white skin, mass of glossy black curls, silver eyes like an angel’s tears.

Where has he gone? I know I have been traveling farther and farther from him but I never before thought that he has simply…ceased to exist.

Smoke desperately pours from the hood of my car as I search the desert for life. Heat simmers above the ribbon of cracked and sun-bleached pavement, no movement in sight. The wind has carved intricate patterns into the ocean of red sand, where scrubs endure alongside bare trees.

But one tree glints silver with Christmas ornaments tightly secured to its branches, defying the cruel landscape, seeming to plead with me from afar.

You are asking me to walk three miles due west from here, as we have done many times before. We once turned that spot, indistinguishable from miles of desert, into a safe haven of our own.

I turn the photo over and find Home scrawled in your handwriting.

I wonder if I could find this boy there. I wonder if you are there now for your respite from university. You are probably there together.

But the silver-eyed boy would not have returned after a fight like the one you and I had. He would have waited for you to apologize to him in petulant silence, arms crossed, eyes cold and gray as weak ice. He would have freed himself of all blame and shackled you to a centuries-long grudge.

I will return, if not just to prove to myself how different I am from him, if not just to finally find him somewhere buried in the sand or ravaged by coyotes.

The heat flows over me like a physical thing. I part a river of sunlight as I walk a deceptive distance, the air hazed with amber dusk. My face wears a mask of sweat that spreads down my body until my skin is suffocating, radiating a desperate heat of its own. I know that silver-eyes has walked this way many times, but somehow the path seems longer now.

If I saw him again face-to-face, he wouldn’t recognize me. But adolescence would soon chase away his youth. Shyly burgeoning maturity would confuse his body as growth crept down his limbs and across his cheeks. At last he would release the shreds of innocence he clung to so desperately, and then he would recognize me.

You also say you can hardly recognize me, but you are the true transformation. I remember the pathos of your sick child’s body emaciated and crumpled beneath your bedsheets. I know that silver-eyes also wanted you to recover so he would be freed from his bondage. He was too tired to read to you most nights, when you were in the most pain, and he claimed his hands ached too badly to rub the pain away from your bones. Forced into his premature role as caretaker, he considered himself diseased as well.

I only want to know where he has gone. I want to shake him, slap him, force him to treat you well. I bear the weight of his mistakes more than you ever could.

My legs begin to drag as twilight breathes colors into the sky. A violet mist settles over the clouds, encouraging me, showing me colors of triumph. The heat seems to pull my bones to the ground, but I will not relent.

Soon I can see shapes of houses creeping over the horizon. A laugh erupts from me and I break into a sprint, all fights and ghosts forgotten, until I stumble to a stop in the backyard of my home.

Peculiarly, my nerves fray as I stand with my fist hovering over the back door. If these women no longer want me here, I have nothing, and I am all too aware of that. 

But of course you open the door before I can knock.

I am finally face to face with you. You’re flushed with health, standing tall and proud.

I’m sorry it took so long.

A slow understanding spreads across your face, a smile tilting up your lips, touched with concern. Your eyes are wide open, showing me what you’re feeling but allowing me not to talk. I feel as if I just returned from school in ninth grade a bit late with a bruise purpling my cheek.

As if I’ve last seen you only this morning.

If that were true maybe—maybe the embrace wouldn’t have been as long or tight with your warmth and relief seeping into me.

Do you know where he is?

Instead of asking, I only bury my face in your shoulder and fight the tears gleaming in my eyes.

You, my sister, my best friend, cannot possibly know how long the separation has been. 

I spent many afternoons in this bedroom. Sunlight lazily pours across an Everest of video games…hand-painted glow-in-the-dark stars ward off fearsome monsters…and beneath the floorboards is a menagerie of letters, entombed in dust and ancient memories. When I lift them out, a messy child’s handwriting tells stories of neighborhood fights and juvenile misadventures. When I was nine years old, I seemed to have had a different life, like I was a completely different person.

I unearth more letters from when I was a young teenager, when you were first diagnosed with your illness. Now my tone bitters into being tired of the responsibility of my ill sister. A nostalgic smile encompasses my entire face at these things, now so insignificant compared to MCATs and university pressures. 

It is strange and curious that the silver-eyed boy who I once was, who had posed for my photograph and had written these letters, no longer exists.

Is he dead and his remnants are scattered within these pages? Did he slowly fade over the years, dissipating into smoke?

He must be there inside of my soul somewhere…but can that be, if we are no longer the same person?

I must carry his ghost with me the way I carried the picture. This boy I used to be, whom I found myself searching for, is part of me still. He teaches me to care for others because he is selfish. He teaches me wisdom from his youthful naïveté. This ghost, he teaches me many things.

One day in the far future I will be a ghost as well. Maybe even tomorrow I will be a ghost of the person I was today.

My family will all be able to testify to whom I used to be as I leave myself behind—I will not forget.

I will never forget.