Echo Eyes
Kimberly Tan
She was the girl with charcoal lashes,
with steel and flinted eyes,
who peered into a colorless world
that was deaf to her silent cries.
She painted with the passion
of a Da Vinci or Cezanne,
but never once completed a painting
without discarding it at dawn.
I caught her gaze just once,
and her look screamed unapproachable,
but though she glared as she turned away
to me she was unavoidable –
because in that moment I saw,
reflected in her smoky eyes,
blue silk currents, cobblestone roads
paths to nowhere and cotton candy skies –
the world in her colored
black and whites,
before a sculpted scowl on her porcelain skin
shielded her echo eyes.