Their Eyes Look Down

Royal sapphires and jagged jewels of other origin. Strawberry cocktails in Paris, filled to the brim with flocks of gut-wrenching ice. A fleeting summer breeze in the palms of the West Coast of America. Layers of extensions tickling the signatures of my back. And a solace in the warmth of financial stability. A celebration from afar. The stench of back-breaking sweat. Senses of guilt, dread, hopelessness. A fear. What have I fallen victim to?

The first bill was crinkled, and stenched of a form of acid. Washington stared up at me, prodding me with his inquisitive sunk-in irises. The name, which was written in bold, blood-red ink across The Great Seal, read Greg Harold… who had only just graduated high school at WestPoint upon his passing.

The second bill was less wrinkled than the first, and smelled of cigarettes and scornful misinterpretations. Innocent, liquid-brown circles spotted Washington’s rounded cheekbones. A silent tear screamed into a bleak void of nothingness. A lost dream corrupted by the souls of a frigid society. This once belonged to Susanna Marson, a single mother of three. Thrice the pain.

Greg Harold, Susanna Mason, George Patrone, Maria Oswald, Alex Thompson. Mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, sisters, brothers… all strangers twisting six feet beneath the gentle soil of the Earth. Across the ocean or maybe across the street… an empty apartment, an empty tent, an empty stand. Multitudes of empty hearts.

I wasn’t sure who had done it... who had sent the box, which was wrapped in a tearful brown-paper, and tied around the edges with stitchings of starch fabric. No address. No name. Maybe they know who I am. They must have dropped it off themselves. I don’t communicate with many these days. Gently, I lay the names back into the box; the inside of which is carpeted with a petite maroon cushion.

Greg Harold, Susanna Mason, George Patrone, Maria Oswald, Alex Thompson. Their names ponder the screen in front of me, running up and down the pages with the scroll of a mechanical button. Waves of blonde, brown, blue. Colors of a soul fade in and out between the photos. Each article is penned by a different hand. Some crude and to the point, written in earnest to be the first story to air. Others mournful and surprising, caressing the reader with deceit and tenderness. I think I preferred the crude as opposed to the false.

An author, an artist, a dancer. A small-town chef, a sales clerk, a single mother. They hadn’t played the game like I had. Good. So perhaps they lived… for what they could have. Then why had they taken the leap? Some off of bridges, some with a bullet in their mind, some beneath a deep, sullen wave. Had they felt lonely?

They must have hated people like me. Entrepreneurs. Those with their lives ahead of them, young, but relishing in the perks of a country where following a dream gets you nowhere. Unless, of course, that dream is similar to their dream. Every product, every material, every fabric of clothing… whose hands made those? Who wriggled beneath the greedy hands of man? Who remained loyal to their dreams with the temptation of a lavish life dangled in front of them… strength that I could have never known. A symphony composed of only minor keys. Some of us are deaf.

Hot hands, brimming tear-shaped crystals, dirty napkins. A cool breeze in the palms of the working, it doesn’t stay long. Stories. Melodic stories. Weeping willows, tears of regretful dreams. The city of the blind. The town of the deceased. Children in adult bodies, feigning innocence. Atrocities put on display for the world to witness. Smoke travels far, but never far enough. Their eyes look down while mine look up.