Girl with the Open Eyes
by Eli Dupree

The day before the business with the acid, and other things we don't like to mention... I had been looking at her, thinking she was asleep in class. Her head lying on the desk, eyes closed, but she must have been awake - out of nowhere, her head rose and turned to face me, and her eyes blinked open and stared into mine.
It felt like she could see my entire self in that moment, looking past my face into my very soul. I didn't turn away from that gaze, I looked back, but I could see nothing more than eyes, see in them nothing more than sight... maybe that was her whole self, that need to look everywhere, see everything. I can't even remember what color her eyes were then, just the feeling.
I rage inside when I remember what happened to her, through no fault of her own. I rage inside when I remember what I did: I deserted her. I fled from those useless, unblinking eyes. I made coarse jokes with my friends about her, and when the jokes grew stale, I forgot her.
Today, I stepped out onto a nameless balcony - one of the countless balconies I have experienced since those days - and it was as if an inexorable force turned a head from the crowd below towards me. Once more I beheld that face, now old; those eyes, now world-weary. They couldn't see me, but she must have known I was there.
Tomorrow, she will die, but those empty eyes will follow me forever.

~(October 2007)