cliché.

 “I fell in love with his eyes.”

I know what you’re thinking. So fucking cliché. But let me tell you about his eyes. His beautiful eyes. Eyes that could warp any sour heart into one that could feel love. The blue that decorates his irises is almost impossible to describe. Think of the early morning, but late into the sunrise. His eyes are the color of the sky where the sunrise hits the blue, that small space in between the morning and new. It’s a lighter blue. The light from the sun streaks through that particular part of the sky, and the darker blue of the day fades in around the edges.

That’s my favorite part of any morning.

That’s one of the many things I loved about him.

The brightness that shines from those two small orbs in his face carried me on through the darkness each night I was with him. Which, in all honesty, was only three nights.

“What?” you ask. “Three nights? Did you spend any other time with him?”

Nope. I only spent three days with him, only for a few hours at a time. When we weren’t together and when we weren’t working, we texted for a few weeks, talking about our lives and passions.

Don’t say that you can’t fall in love with someone in such a short amount of time. The tears that stream down my pale cheeks say otherwise. The sickness that evacuated me when he told me he was moving says otherwise. Me screaming into my pillow; that’s me saying otherwise.

Love isn’t timed. It just happens.

Each moment I spent with him was measured by the emotions in the sky of his eyes. His eyes were bright and curious before he closed them when he leaned in to kiss me. When he apologized for the sudden affection, both excitement and curiosity danced in the sky. I saw passion and a hint of what looked like something similar to love when he cradled my body in his hands.

I told him how much I adored his eye color the second time we were together. They were bright after he gushed about his guilty pleasure, which happened to be the same as mine. Bright white streaks raced from his pupil to the outer iris where a dark ring caught the light, causing bubbles of emotions to rise. He blushed, grabbed my red cheeks, and whispered, “I’ve never seen more beautiful eyes than yours.”

I about fell off his bed hearing those words. Many a man has told me my eyes are beautiful, but I could see this man look past the color and into my thoughts. Past the grass green iris with gold flakes and a black outer ring. His baby blues board into my soulful windows and he described the color in a poetic manor. Nothing too cheesy or cliché. Just straight forward, yet beautiful.

I kissed him.

He grinned, wrapped me in my arms, and proceeded to tell me how much he loved my lips. I told him about his dimpled chin and how I’ve admired it for years, back when I first saw him in middle school, when he was a star athlete and I was an awkward artist. He ran his hand through my short hair. I ran mine along his toned arms. From our eyes to our toes we stroked and examined and expressed our passion from each other.

“Have you ever tired long distance?” He shook his head. “A thousand miles between to people isn’t too bad,” I said that last afternoon. He agreed, but we didn’t go for it. I told him to find me when he comes back to visit. That he went for.

“I don’t want to move away now that you’re here.”

When I cry I hear that sentence. I’d much rather hear, “You don’t affect my decision to leave.” It’d be a different kind of pain. I wouldn’t think of sleeping next to him during that last hot night, skin to skin with interlocking fingers and legs. The memory of scooting closer to each other the first day until we are legs and lips were touching. The talks, the texts, the hugs and kisses; all wouldn’t burn my brain so much if he hadn’t told me how much of a connection he felt with me. They wouldn’t haunt my dreams and remind me that I never bothered to ask him to stay, asked him to try long distance, ask him to postpone moving another day. I’d hurt less if that last afternoon was real.

I wouldn’t cry so much if I would have said his name when I saw him at work on his last day.

He walked right by me. I saw his eyes move across the clipboard in his hand.

And I said nothing.

Instead, I went home and painted his soul with blue paints.