Green Eyes

How would you define time? One minute for a person who counting it down, watching it from 59, and disappearing to zero, could feel like forever. One minute for someone who’s not paying attention could feel like the minute never even existed. A physicist would look at the time and see an equation, or a writer would look at time as a story.

A man, in his house, sat by a window and a brick fireplace. His iced blue eyes, which appeared to look sore, and tired, stared into the dark blue, dead of night, and the mountains of snow of what he had isolated himself with for miles, at which he looked at as protection, a barrier, or an excuse to leave people he knew before. The sky was bare from stars, and his fingertips grew cold instantly on the cigar he lit. As he looked out at the blank sky, he began to lose himself in his thought of the snow running for infinity, and how cold, and alone he was. Trapped out in a winter dessert and beginning to run out of food and supplies. He glanced down at his pale, purple fingertips, and focused on the smoke that steadily streamlined off the end of the cigar. His head and back slowly started relying on the wooden chair as he fell back to gain comfort, and closing his eyes, he found peace.

He dreamt of a woman with long, red hair and wide green eyes. Her smile was sharp and the curve was enough to make the hairs on the back of his neck stand. He had never seen something so delicate but sharp, so glaring and blind, yet dark and deep. He knew that not another day would come where he wouldn't think of how soft and sweet her eyes glazed, and how beautiful she was when she closed her eyes in peace. The urge to touch her forehead and move the hair to the corner of her face. He told her he loved her and that there would never be another for him, even if he tried. She would let a brief burst of laughter and a wide grin out as he told him she didn’t believe him. He looked deeply into her eyes and watched them change from a woman’s eye to an owl’s eye, green and fierce, the eyes of a predator. The image of the dilated eye took over his brain leaving no room to think or see anything else in his mind. A tear fell from his closed lids and ran down his cheek straight, and over the right side of his lips, from his head tilted back against the chair.

He watched her leave and didn’t stop her. Even if he tried he didn’t think she’d listen, she didn’t love him anymore, and couldn’t fake it. He replayed it in his mind, over and over, therefore there was nothing for him to do isolated by snow like this except remember. He remembers how hard it was to read her face towards the end, and how her eyes slowly fell from a soft glow to an empty stare. He rarely dreamt of her coming back, weirdly enough, only of her leaving. For a man like him, time didn’t exist. He had no schedule, no family or friends to see, no obligations, only time, of which he counted down, and of which felt like an eternity.

The next morning he had retrieved his coffee and cigar and placed himself in the same spot, the chair near the window and fireplace. He watched the wind blow the loose snow from one end of the field to the other like a dessert. He had spotted a barn in the far distance and shortly after locked his cold, winter eyes onto the green-eyed predator. It seemed as though in the middle of nowhere, an owl had caught a man's attention, and the man had caught the owls. He started his gaze of daydreaming early in the day, and today he thought of his 31st birthday after she had left him, a birthday where he would throw the hors d’oeuvres at his mother for calling him pathetic. His grandmother had pulled him aside and insisted he would listen to her lecture. The conversation they had was the first time someone had ever said, “You have so much time, you’re still young.” and he believed it. In fact, he felt sick as he replayed the sentence in his mind. He felt agony and dread at the time left and laid out for him. Did he want this much time? He never expected the minutes to feel so long without her. Nobody ever tells you about the horror that comes after true love. He cringed at his grandmother’s words but listened politely anyway, knowing that his thoughts were his, and nobody else could hear them. He was more of an observer and listener himself, it would’ve been harder to engage in the conversation when you can just nod and obey. After all, she was right. Ten years had passed and still, with all the time in the world there he sat, counting down the minutes, from 59, and down to zero, as he fell into lucid dreams or memories of a better life, a life he didn’t have.

Every following morning for months, the owl would show up on his porch for food. Its piercing green eyes were somehow trusting. It seemed to only be the one owl living the barn far in the distance, and he was grateful for the company. Months passed where the owl would show up for corn or seeds, and he had realized that the owl had enjoyed the company as well. He set up a bird feeder for Milo, (he believed it was a girl), and often left fleece blankets in a large birdhouse he build for her. He had missed caring for something, he missed having a purpose in life. He didn’t realize he had been so alone, with a frozen heart, the day Milo had never come back. He had found comfort in knowing that the owl would come back to see him until weeks passed and sorrow built. Every day he would look out at the barn from his wooden chair, and grow more and more curious about what was inside. Until on Thursday, January 13th, 1978, he decided to make the trek to the distant barn to finally stop his rambled thoughts and to find closure, to see if Milo was still there, and he prayed.

The man’s face began to tighten to the cold. The hairs in his nose singed and froze immediately upon stepping outside and even though he had been wearing a white, arctic coat, he could still feel the freeze and sting of the crisp and fresh air that touched any part of his skin. He had walked almost 5 kilometers in an effort to see inside. It was large and comfortable. It was very tall and made from redwood. It showed three large pillars that were the only supporting thing keeping the roof from collapsing. On the closest pillar to the door, there sat Milo in her nest, green eyes glaring, following her head with each step he took towards her.

He thought he heard the woman’s voice, ”Kenny?” He whipped his head around so fast his neck warmed and muscles became sore instantly. It was her, and her red hair, her soft glow, and no empty stare. He fell to his back but was saved by the snow below him, he looked up and focused on the rotting wood and the light blue sky, very calm and quiet. In a fogged, background noise, he heard his name being called by the woman he loved voice one again, almost sounding like he was listening to her call him from underwater. He paid no attention to anything else except the feeling of being blended in with the sky. The sun had hit his face through the gaps in the roof. His nose was a red-purple and the joints in his hands grew stiff. His toes were frozen together and his eyelashes had icicles. He laid in the mounds of snow and slowly the life fell from his eyes, as he froze under the shadow of the nest. There became two owls that day, piercing over his body from the comfort of the high pillar, glaring with vicious green, and icy blue eyes.

Without life, what really is time? Does it cease to exist because it has nothing to age? Does it blend in with the wind and sky?