The Transparent Eyeball

n. The intense heat on the skin of a sleeping person, a radioactive byproduct of an active mind humming with secret delusions which then vaporize when plunged into the cooling bath of reality, thus preventing a meltdown which could endanger those close by, who tolerate the risk because it gives them energy.

~ dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com

There really is an obscure sorrow about watching someone sleep. No matter what you feel about that person, it’s impossible to feel anything but a complex swath of emotions completely distinct from your actual feelings for them when they’re awake, even if it’s hatred. There’s only a melancholy serenity, an unexpected sense of protectiveness, and the most bittersweet tenderness as you watch their eyelids twitching from an unknown dream.

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken, it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

~ C.S. Lewis

We were boxing, we were boxing the stars.
We were boxing (we were boxing)
You were swinging for Mars.
And then the water reached the West Coast
And took the power lines (the power lines)
And it was me and you (this could last forever)
And the whole town under water…
There was nothing we could do.
It was dark blue.

~ Jack’s Mannequin

Most eyes have more than one color, but usually they’re related. Blue eyes may have two shades of blue, or blue and gray, or blue and green, or even a fleck or two of brown. Most people don’t notice that. When I first went to get my state ID card, the form asked for eye color. I tried to write in all the colors in my own eyes, but the space wasnt big enough. They told me to put ‘brown’. I put ‘brown’, but that is not the only color in my eyes. It is just the color that people see because they do not really look at other people’s eyes.

~ Elizabeth Moon