Open Your Eyes
"What are you doing?"
The hum of the refrigerator fills the silence. The microwave glows three quarters past eleven. Behind gauzy lace curtains in snow-powdered windows, the Christmas lights blink quietly.
Red… Blue… Green… Yellow…
But in this moment, the only thing he's aware of is her, standing in their parents' kitchen, wearing a pair of socks, one of his old hockey jerseys, and apparently nothing else.
(It is happening again.)
Red… Blue… Green… Yellow…
"What does it look like I'm doing?"
She speaks distractedly with her back to him, slicing bananas for a bowl of cereal. The sleeves of his jersey are too long for her, though, and she has to keep pushing them out of the way. Miracle on 34th Street flashes mutely across the small TV on the counter beside her, and the way its soft haze plays against her legs has him mesmerized.
He slowly removes his Santa hat and leans against the doorway, observing wordlessly as she stands on her tiptoes to grab a box of Peanut Butter Crunch in the cabinet. The jersey shifts upwards as she reaches. He swallows hard.
Yellow… Red…
She pours some milk, holding the large gallon with both hands, close to her chest, and asks if their parents have put their brother to bed yet. Their brother—that will never stop being weird. He answers distantly after a long delay. She glances to him at last, curious, a spoon in her mouth and a strand of tinsel in her hair. Their gazes catch.
He watches then, head resting on the threshold of that dark room, eyes wide, lips parted, as she takes in his expression and the realization spreads slowly across her face.
Red… Blue…
"What the fuck are you doing?" he asks again in the same quiet voice, his gaze locked with hers.
She fingers the edges of her (his) too-long sleeves in helpless acknowledgement of the mistake, and the weight of all the ones that came before this presses suddenly against them. They don't move or speak. The moment swells. They hold their breath and wait for it to wash over, to crash on a farther shore with all the rest.
Red… Blue… Green… Yellow…
Red… Blue…
Red…
Red…
But passing between them is an unbearable weariness and the bone-deep fear that after eleven years of moments like these, there's no coming back from this one.