Eyes, the beautiful armatures in the world. Nothing can escape these eyes. The nature, landscapes, architecture and all the living creatures. Not everything is beautiful until you make it look beautiful. Same goes for the eyes that are looking at me right now. Brown. How to describe it? Caramel brown, honey brown, chocolate brown, earth brown, golden brown or simply brown. I don’t know. I know one thing for sure; that I’m lost in them and that’s going to be the death of me. It was just a split second that those eyes came across mine and god, do they look fiery under sunlight. I took a step back tearing the eye contact. “Those eyes, they were never meant to look at me”. I kept repeating those words trying to convince myself not to give into it on my way home. But it keeps coming back to my mind only for me to realize, they never left in the first place to begin with.
I dreamt of those eyes wandering places it never should have. The trial leaving a cold touch and bizarre abstract. I didn’t notice the face; only those deadly eyes hold my ground that I remember. Strange. A week passed and I never once encountered those fiery brown eyes again. In this week, I felt so open, without boundaries, unguarded, as if someone traversing me. Wherever I leave, I can sense a pair of eyes wandering me, my every moment. Expecting them to be the familiar pair of eyes made me feel overwhelmed and precarious at the same time.
As an artist I wanted to do the only thing I could do at this moment. The next day I went to my studio in the hopes of drawing those eyes, giving them life but something strange happened. There was a painting of daffodils sitting on my wooden easel. It was not the painting that felt strange but the note attached to it that read, “See you soon”. There was no name, no sign, and no initials written on it. I didn’t it give much of a thought, thinking it might belong to one of my students. But things happened following days. I keep seeing daffodils everywhere I go, considering a pair of eyes watching my every moment. It was not hard to notice that spine chilling gaze from afar in the dark shadows.
Now it’s confirmed that these are not the eyes I was expecting them to be, and why daffodils? One day I walked down the street from my studio to home. The sky painted itself with orange, pink, and purple. The kids were playing soccer in the plain ground beside a construction site. The sunrays felt so soft on my skin almost melting on me. The breeze was just perfect, dancing through my hair. That evening felt pleasant after an exhausting week of mental distress.
Entering home I found a book and a daffodil on top of it resting on the dining table. Inside I found an invitation to the play revolving around Greek mythology. There is this feeling again, of confusion and distress. Part of me hoping I could find this person there and part of me screaming this is a bad idea. There was fear budding deep inside me. It took all in me to pluck it out and head for the play.
I took a seat at the far end of the theatre near a glass door. The play was about Narcissus, the son of river god and a nymph who went for hunting. He felt thirsty and went on for the search of river. There he fell in love with his own reflection. Full in love he stayed by the river and wasted away. Finally, he said his farewell to the Echo and died in the river. His people mourned for his death and covered him with his hair while preparing for the funeral. Later, they were left with utter shock only for them to find a daffodil in place of his body.
The daffodil. Something strikes in me like a lightening. I turn to my left and met with those familiar brown eyes. Looking deep into mine leaving me awestruck. Everything came to me like last night dream. It was me that I’m looking at. It was all me, the painting, the daffodils, and the invitation. The eyes, they are mine but fiery, far from my knowledge. A mysterious light shone upon those brown eyes almost making them amber. The last words I could conquer before everything turned pitch black were, “So long, now it’s my turn to shine”.