In 2008, two girls sat within a confined garden nestled in an alleyway. The walls were 4 feet apart and between the grapevine leaves was a word square painted in cerulean: cube ugly blue eyes, read the same horizontal and vertical. Left by a previous tenant, the poem would become a backdrop to spin the bottle played in a kiddie pool, sex between roommates, and a solitary girl eating Smart Food in a hammock while watching Survivor. Right now, the poem was witness to an afternoon between best friends. To one, this afternoon was meaningless, unmemorable, casual. To the other, it was pivotal. Between sips of their 40s and bites of salted cucumber, they looked into each other’s eyes while discussing their current lack of social life. One set like the sky, one set like steel. It was a second where they actually saw each other, and the set of steel had an impulse she had successfully repressed for two years: to kiss the sky-eyed girl. She did not listen to the disturbing desire that felt momentarily natural, she did not ruminate on leaning in. She pretended that nothing had changed behind her eyes, and quietly finished her 40. What followed that garden afternoon was shame. Shame had followed the girl since she was a child, since her brother’s friend made her bounce on his hard dick when she was 7. Since she was 14 and her brother-in-law touched her vagina while they watched Big Brother. Since she was 18, just a month before the moment in the garden when she was raped on the living room floor of a beautiful three story walk-up. She knew she was gross, and wrong in some way. Did she sense her wrongness because of these events, or did these events happen because of the wrongness? She didn’t think that deeply, she simply just repressed. Repressed the enormous love she felt for her best friend, any feelings of want sank to her core and she built a metal cube of defence around all of it. She was disgusting, her inclinations wrong, she had no right to feel. While being cloaked in metal, she watched the sky-eyed girl fall in love with their roommate. She numbly fucked her first girlfriend on the living room floor. She fell into a relationship of coldness and Machiavellian mind-games. After 5 years, her father died, and there was a break in the steel. The metal remained, but feeling poured through a crack. She grieved her magical father, and was able to think about the men in her youth who touched her body as though it was theirs. She left the apartment where her bedroom window’s view was nothing but that cerulean word square, and found windows that saw only trees. She was celibate and alone, retreating into her imagination. She found ways to share herself with the world safely, while keeping her metal cube as protected from the outside world as she could. After 5 years of living within her dreams, she met a set of hazel eyes. They were the warmest she had ever seen, and without her choosing, the metal began to melt. The want at her core surfaced, and it was quite horrible. She didn’t want to face her repulsive desire, didn’t want to look at her love or intrinsic wrongness, but she had no choice. Though part of her wanted to turn away from the girl with eyes like the sun, she could picture her father, steel eyed like her, with a gentle urging akin to Winnie the Pooh: ‘this is love sweet daughter, this is a gift’. Every single repressed feeling and urge to lean in and crevice of the enormous love she shoved into that steel cube was free, and felt. It was awful, and liberating, and allowed her to accept the gift. Her eyes changed, and what she saw was no longer ugly, it was pure. She figures she’ll marry those hazel eyes two summers from now, as long as she remembers that love doesn’t exist to be contained within steel, but to be expressed. It’s very easy to forget, because somehow the cube felt more natural. She’s learned to set little traps for herself that prod her into remembering. She dances, rants, writes, and within those expressions she sees a reflection: the eyes of a child, a soul worthy of freedom. Perhaps we deserve a poem with more than four words. Perhaps without the weight of metal within, we would float like a balloon in the wind. I wonder where the wind could take us.
