Irises clogged with passing shreds of something that might be himself, he breathes, blowing heavy through tight lips. the sounds of the TV bruised by the thickness of the dread-built nightmares standing in the room. One can feel the world bend, as if watching the world shift from one gear to another. Old to new–to nothing, a stilted hack-kneed transition, botched by some drunk and belligerent piece of the universe.
It’s beyond most to watch. Beyond all but the most affected to throw themselves into. Like watching a mortar fall and, through some ancient magic, destroy only the soul.
But you can’t know. You can never know what lay hidden behind those eyes. Clogged or not, they are too familiar, too caught in cross-hairs of memory to be abandoned to what you’ve been delivered as fact.
And so you sit, watching, a knocking pressure at your gut, telling you your only looking through a mirror.
A Land of Rum and Writing 