A Trip to the Museum and What He Saw
Why have you brought me here? It was written clearly all over his beautiful face.
“Come with me.” I pleaded as the only answer to his unspoken question.
I lead him into the next room, away from all the people humming excitedly as they stare at the walls.
But it’s true. Why have I brought him here when he does not seem to understand that I am finally showing him me? Who am I kidding? I cannot not just bring him to a museum and make him understand.
I made a point not to meet his dark eyes until we were there, standing in the middle of the empty room. Well… empty of people.
“I — ”
“Please,” I say softly, looking up at him for the first time in too long. “Just listen for a moment,” now feeling brave and refusing to even blink.
I need to get this out, to show him what he’s been missing.
I take his silence as a surrender and remove a wall from my heart for the first time. I am going to try and explain. I am going to tell the truth — the truth about what I have been thinking about nothing and everything. I have stayed quiet now for too long and not shared a piece of myself with anyone. This is the only way to make him understand, even if it is just for this moment.
“Close your eyes.
And don’t speak”
He does not trust me. I can feel it oozing off of his body on to my own like a fog that stings. Trying desperately not to end my own discomfort, I keep going, because I have to make him see me…
“Trust me,” I say even more softly, smiling kindly with my yellow eyes.
He closes his own eyes and I lead him over to the far wall opposite of where we were facing. Stopping in front of a canvas that stretches from floor to ceiling and corner to corner, I check to make sure his eyes are still closed. I squeeze his hand; although it may not have been as comforting as going home and forgetting this ever happened.
Why am I so desperate for someone to understand me?
What am I even doing?
“Picture just for a moment that you are you but in another life. You are you, but you could never see. You sit on the beach and listen to the orchestra of water just beyond your sanctuary in the sand. You stand on a mountain at dawn and feel the wind chase the sun as it flies through your outstretched fingers. And you are you in another life… Then what? One day you stumble into a museum with a girl. She is not a stranger but you have never seen her before. She drags you over to a wall in a vacant room. She tells you to open your eyes, to open them truly for the first time in your entire life. There was only darkness until this very instant.
Nothingand then everything!
So tell me,” I say while walking slowly away, “what do you see?”
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