Glimmering Crystal Eyes

-Takeo Kawasaki ‘23

My first touch, a real physical touch, was water. As the shocking array of beaming lights exposed my newly translucent body, the cold air separated me from the sanctum warmth, and I arrived.

I could hear the muffled sounds of those around. Although I could not piece the puzzle of sounds together, I could see those who towered before me. The blank faces, with full black figures, gazing down toward the clump of energy struggling for life.

There in the ramble of sounds, two large hands engulfed my body, and carried me out of the lukewarm water. The first face I had seen, the first voice I had heard. That was my mother, my mother who did not know me, yet saw everything of my future. With the glimmering crystals set in her face, she asked “Hello there young one, who are you?”

My family and I lived in a large metal box, and while my father replaced himself with letters and presents, my mother and I would work on the house. But one day, as I stared at an envelope with my name written in his familiar scrawl, I opened my mouth in a question but no sound followed. My mother said that the doctors would fix it. But the doctors seemed to only fix their heads right to left as my mother held her eyes. With my voice still lost, I tried to find the closest help I could give, plucking weeds in the garden, or shoveling snow off the stairs. But whenever I reach for a rake or a shovel, my mother’s nerves would frazzle. Over time, I was told that it would be better off watching the world run by. My parents would pat me on the head, tuck me to bed, grace me with smiles and say that they loved me. But when together, congregated under the single light above the table, voices were tucked and eyes wandered only in the boundaries of the circular plates. And every day, the red wrinkles on my father’s head would continue to stretch, and the tired blue eyes of my mother would sink deeper into her skull. I could not foresee that one family would become a family of ones. All searching for something they could not have. The only knot left to tether this fluttering flock together was their product of the past.

But soon after the days of exhaustion, my mother’s eyes had worsened, until she closed them and never opened again. Since then, we began to leave daisies at the stone where mother laid under, and my father took up the task called me. For years we would drive the same road, lay the same daisies, and drive home. He would take my hand, and would drive with a quiet that surpasses even space. Seeming as if it was a chore, a nuisance, he would grab my shoulder and drop one tear all the way home. I found myself in the way of those around me. I thought it would make it better, maybe I could free those that were chained to my weight if I left. So I would pack my bags and break the chain, but every time I attempted, my father would be at the end of the road. Every time he would embrace me in his arms and chain himself back up, he would never let me go, the contract with his signature binding him with no escape.

For the longest time I believed that we were distant, that we were sad people, but nothing in my family was wrong, no one fought, no one left, no one was alone. I was, as they say, loved. Only when time passed, my perspective shifted, I noticed my past was trapped, a trap set by myself and triggered in turn by myself. Over time I began to wonder if I was truly the reason for mundaneness. Was I the regret, was I infusing a distorted message in fathers tear drop? Maybe I was simply a product of timing gone wrong. How could I know, I never knew who they were, before I had entered that water.

Nevertheless, I had forgotten all of this. The image of my mother grazing my hair, my father’s grip on the car handle, the driveway coated with tears, the days of misunderstanding, all simply stored away deep in the cabinets of memory.

-Aidan Davie ‘22

Time had passed, life had been lived, with children of my own, and struggles endured. All I could hope for was a family, together, to mold worth, to give, to grow, and to love. To face each other's smiles under the light above the table.

Now left with two rings on one finger, one bed, and one toothbrush. The nest I once called home was filled with fragments of memories played on repeat in every corner. Fingers brushing against the old coats of paint, reliving the years that built this sanctum of warmth tethered tightly through countless knots.

I sit, watching the world run by. Opening letters every day, from my blood spread across the land show photos filled with the same glimmering crystal eyes, a memory from a distant time, I found myself to be enough.

I see now how it was supposed to.

So I lay in the tub, neck high, aged older than I would care to be. I recall all of the years, months, and days. Pain began to fade, with all the pages stored in the infinite athenaeum fluttering into the abyss. I could feel my mind becoming lighter, off loading all of the life that makes the I, you, us, and them. All becoming lighter, now with nothing but the simplest understanding of the beaming lights. With the long lost mind of my dearest beginning. I sat there and noticed, the last thing I touched, a real physical touch, was water. Deeper, and deeper, simply too tired to fight, too tired of the struggle, only to be released engulfed by water.