THE LOVE IN HIS EYES

 – By Hilanzok

She breaks down in tears as she sees him. His eyes a shade of light brown surrounded by a shrub of lashes speaks volume of what he has experienced in his life. His face a texture of smooth avocado gleamed through the canvas-skin; coarse to touch, spectacular and perfect to the sight.

She doesn’t know how to explain it, but she felt this tug in her heart, she knows this boy has experienced things the eyes would bleed if it sees, and the mouth would be reluctant to voice out. It is evident in the liquidity of his eyes, the expressionless look( like a 21st-century male Monalisa) they bore. His cheekbones chiseled and firm fitted like a glove to his trimmed face. He is beautiful, but suffering and despair loomed in his aura, he didn’t need to say it out, in fact, he didn’t need to say anything. She is satisfied just looking at his face, admiring and accessing the contours of his face. She feels the urge to lean forward and press her lips against his, she wants to know what it feels like to taste the wet-warmth of his pouty-luscious lips. She has never kissed a man like him, he seems so different from the others, yet so alike. She shut her eyes in a bid to blank out the thoughts rushing like a torrential flood in her mind. She wants him badly, but does he want her as much as she did?

His stare is empty, dead as a noiseless night. He isn’t moving, he is static. She doesn’t like static men, they are mean, and they have made her suffer a lot. Her Father was a static man, he had raped her repeatedly for ten years, threatening to kill her if she ever said a word to anyone. Her eldest brother was static, when she was young he would call her into his room at night when their parents and other siblings were asleep, and he would force her on her knees, flop out his phallus and stick it forcefully into her mouth; pushing in and out rhythmically till she felt something warm and sticky like Okra soup but with a nauseating taste, inside her mouth. She didn’t know what he was doing then, it was years later after he had died in a car accident and she had married, that she understood.
Her husband was a static man. They were married, yet he raped her endlessly and physically assaulted severally. He had a fetish of forcing her to eat his feces, he was a chronic coprophilic. When she got tired of the marriage and couldn’t bear it again she opted out, but no he wouldn’t let her go. He threatened to kill her. Yet when she reported to her pastor and the church council they said, “ Woman what nonsense are you saying, how can you say your husband asks you to eat his feces, are you a dog”? No one believed her, he blatantly denied it, screaming that she is mad and have been brooding the intention to kill him and inherit his property. Since God through his church and in her endless prayers didn’t do anything she handled the situation, now she is a widow, her husband’s charred remains which would have turned to dust by now lies six feet under the ground.

She is a single woman. Everyone is saying she is a lunatic, that they see madness hovering in her eyes and in her talks. But she doesn’t believe it. She cannot be mad. No one can experience the trepidation, humiliation, and misery she has experienced and go mad, nobody.

She looks at the man, her new love interest, and she leans forward to kiss him.

At that moment her younger brother flings the door to his studio open and sees his schizophrenic sister kissing one of his portraits.