The message in brown eyes

Late at night, when I reach out to touch you under the sheets and you are still, I can't help it but I have to go back to that time when your dark mahogany hair was long, framing your face and your smile was quick and your dark eyes were flashing with a message that I didn't quite read, but maybe a part of me did read it and stashed it away in my mind for later work, like garden tools placed in the workshed to be pulled out on a bright, sunny day when the air was so cool and fragrant of Spring flowers, like hyacinth, blue and pink and purple, and I would think about you in your light blue dress standing in the hallway at Dunwoody with Sue Mitchell and Ronnie and I couldn't help but stop and talk and flirt in the dark hallway, because outside it was Spring and the sap was rising, rising indeed, and another brick was laid in the walkway which would lead us to dances in the cafeteria on a Saturday night where we played around and I dont' think we actually danced at all, until it was the dead of Winter and you were gone with your family to California and I would be left behind to matriculate to Virginia and go on with life and attend classes and try to earn a spot on the football team and study geology and philosophy and english and then walking down Nelson Street from the movie theater, one night, glancing in a window into a women's clothing store and seeing a coat, just a brown coat, and remembering, and finding a fountain, springing forth from the cold rocks of Winter, and the water running, splashing down the rocks and so cold, so cold, but alive and living and breathing like something inanimate was made alive and you were there in your blue dress and your sweet smile and your flashing brown eyes which spoke to me in their expression and gave me words to speak and write down and remember and memorialize the moment on the written page.

In the beginning, was the word, and the word was hidden in the arch of those dark brown eyes, but perceived and etched on the page and carved in the cortex, here to see. Laid out on the page for all to see. And remember and cause me to reach out again and touch.