Another Short Short Story From The Impossibly Over-Saturated Brain-Heart Of Summer Anne Burton

Beholder:

When I asked David what he saw in me, it wasn’t related to the blindness. I didn’t mean for it to be. I was just fishing for something endearing to hold on to the nights he chose to spend at his apartment, or the weekends he went out of town. Something like “You are a magical girl, Shelly. Your laugh makes my stomach warm,” or “You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met and you challenge me in a way that forces me to be a better person,” or “you’re really good with your mouth, it feels like the real thing, it really does.”

But he blinked his white pupils at me when I said it and I immediately clapped my hand over my mouth, not that he could see that. He looked at me, though. He did. It took me awhile to get used to how a blind person can look at you, but trust me – they can. He senses where I am. He never opens his eyes as widely as a normal – I mean, not-blind – person would, but he looks right at me, he does.

He spoke before I could apologize for my wording. “I see in you a fog. I see in you a picture I saw before, of a girl in a book with yellow braids because you told me your hair was long and golden.” At this point I felt a little guilty thinking of my matte, hay-colored curls. It’s easy to exaggerate when a cute blind boy asks you to describe yourself. “I see you surrounded by light but you yourself are always in shadow. I see the outline of you shine so bright that I close my eyes, again, and they never stop closing.”

At this point I really wanted to cut him off because it was starting to feel like a little much and I worried about what he would say next.

“I see you as soft. I see your smell… you smell like cat litter but also like honey and melons, so I see a kitten full of fruit. I see your voice as a kitten too. I see you all the time, whether you’re here or not, because nothing I see ever changes but you are standing behind my eyes, in my head, smiling at me and not-shining all the time. What I see in you, when I look at you – or whatever you want to call it – is a shape that softens every sharp thing.”

And then he asked me what I saw in him and I said, trying to hide the tears in my voice, “I like the way you speak and I like the space between your nose and your mouth and I like your mother,” and by that point I guess it was pretty obvious that I was crying and David had his arms around me. I know he thought I was crying with joy because he had said such nice things to me after I’d said something insensitive, but really I was crying because he had reminded me, once again, as he would every day we were together, that he would never simply say that I was “beautiful.”