A coffer full of copper

"She would have loved you", he said, hinting at the photograph he had taken of his late mother, and a pearl fell out of his eye. And another, and another, and some more. A coffer full.

I blinked with every pearl that left his eye, and looked for everything except for his tan, briny eyes. It reminded me of the sea. Yet, my eyes were too arid to grow for him, and deep down, I covenanted, so was my heart. As one more pearl advanced under the influence of gravity, there I sat, indifferent, realising what he meant to me was insignificant. Taking in the enormity, as paper would consume the water in its vicinity, some part of me came to an agreement that I had become as brutal as they made me to be. For what was to him a coffer full of pearls, locked with love and longing, was a coffer full of copper to me.

WORDS NIRVIKA LOPCHAN