EYES

She came into my office with pictures of her two kids. She wanted to see what I thought, she wanted to see the look on my face as I browsed through minor details of her life, the small trivia that composes the bulk of our existences.

Her oldest daughter, all of ten years old, is the spitting image of her, a miniature version, the face, the oblong eyes, the blissful Mona Lisa expression, a serene variation on the Faraway Look In The Eye...

The younger girl, a toddler, giggles with dimpled babyface cheeks and shares the eyes, the almond-shaped, seemingly all-knowing stare, and when I point this out she blushes and laughs, for it seems like she longs to share this with others but cannot find anyone who will pay even the remotest amount of attention.

She told me she wanted to set up a game that we could play, when she is bored and done with her duties but forced to stick around while she waits for her carpool to finish up. She sits in my office and watches me move the mouse and cut and paste and burn and click and drop.

I am good at conversation, I treat it like the finest of arts, and I can do my chores while asking her questions, expressing interest, picking her brain and trying to find out more, treating her like an enigmatic puzzle that I am compelled to solve, prying politely and making small punctuation points in my speech...

She has a longing in her eyes, an ache to be understood, appreciated, heard... it is the longing of all women, to be loved and also admired, to be needed and considered, to have a reason for hanging out way too long, a purpose for the heavy sighs and the deep breaths...

Girls like me because I listen. They like me because I will not try to solve their problems for them. I let them vent, I cast no judgement, because I know that even if I offer my advice, my opinion, they'd rather have someone hear them out than have someone fix their flaws. I offer up a pure love, one rooted in compassion and sympathy, not desire or lust or even a sense of entitlement...

I only want to help. How can I help?

By being me, by being concerned with what someone else needs as opposed to what I want.

Today the weather is grey, and the temperature is cool, but there is blinding sunshine inside my mind, to temper the sorrow that overlooks tomorrow's horizon, from sunrise to sunset...