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Blink

Meredith Wilshere

    She came into the world, blinking. They told her to keep her eyes open and to not watch the world go by her window. But there were sleepless nights and screaming that would keep her mom awake, and too many things to explore the next day. She would have to blink. She’d spend her days at the street fair that “polluted” her eyesight as prophesied by her mom, with her big glasses and curly hair extending past her shoulders. She’d go every day and with her face pressed to the sky, and eyes fixated on the sun, she’d blink.
    She’d watch her brother grow, taller than the mighty oak that planted its roots at the house next door. She would move his army men around her head while she watched him move his boxes. “Don’t go” she would plead. “I have to.” She watched him go, leaving behind a life for another one dressed in green and prayed that if she closed her eyes, he would come back. She blinked until every last box was gone.
    She met her husband in a big office building filled with promises and ambitions. As he brought her coffee in the morning and her coat at night she would stare into the swimming pools that lay on both sides of his nose, wanting to never break that gaze. She would shift her focus from the photocopied papers that she loathed to his visage, a much more familiar territory. His soft features juxtaposed his rough edges and she would have no other choice but to match his stare until she encoded every one of his attributes. Her eyes would dry and there would be no other option, no matter how much she would plead and beg in that instance, she would have to blink.
    She had kids too. As day slipped into night and weariness grew on her children’s faces, as it often did, she would warn them not to blink. Their castles and pretend gun fights had them fast asleep at night and she would watch them grow as she did with her own brother. The pencil notices on the door frame were creeping towards adulthood as she would need a step ladder to make final impressions. They would move their boxes as she watched her brother do all those years ago and with tears welling in her eyes, she would blink.

***

    It’s the moments that you never want to let go of. It’s your white shoes left by his chair as he leads you into the crowd of people all clapping their hands with their wide smiles. You feel the electricity run through you like a current as you feel your feet prancing across the wooden floor. Or it’s the time spent with someone lost, forgetting how keeping their company was less of an occupation for you than for anyone else, how their attention would follow you like a loyal dog, making what seems to be an impossible connection as they trail your conversation. It’s someone receiving your cues as they lean in closer to not only hear what you’re saying, but to listen. It’s these moments that you wish to collect as you did fireflies in glass jars when you were small, but somehow you lost your grip and your cupped hands released your treasures. Your hands were too big to hold those moments forever as they slipped through your fingers and you too, maybe without recognizing it or watching it happen, blinked.

    She met her divorce lawyer in a big office building filled with dirty words and broken ambitions. Maybe it was the same building she met her husband. She wasn’t sure. Time had blurred the lines between the past and the future. She met his swimming pools with pools of her own, empty as if the scorching sun has evaporated all of their substance. Turns out, the offering of the coat and coffee weren’t hers to keep, and the papers she filed were now of a different topic. She returned to her house that night, and tried to piece together what her life had become. Enveloped in the empty sheets of her king sized bed, holding back her tears, she blinked so hard she wished to never open her eyes again.
    She lost her sense of reality. The words she read became less clear, the lines that made up her house began to fade as the numbers on the clock blurred into one mess. Her sadness transformed into her sickness, the absence of love became her curse, and when she blinked her clarity became her obscurity. She heard arguing, scrutinizing over papers and placements. She blinked, and she was no longer home.
    They visited her in the hospital, with her eyes wide open and empty; they held her hand and asked if she had any last words. In a moment of surprising clarity, look directly at them. “Don’t blink,” she said with one last breath. “Please don’t ever blink.” She blinked for the last time that day.

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