The Girl with Coldwater Eyes

The Girl with Coldwater Eyes

The sound of ten, stolen, thumping hearts haunt me everywhere I go; I do not regret taking any of them. I was taught the art of stealing heated kisses from hungry mouths by my grandmother, who left a string of men behind her. She was strong, unlike me. She held her head high, striding through barren wastelands, picking up worn out lovers and renewing them to their full glory. She was a light touch in the darkest of fogs, and the blue sparks in the fire, burning you if you got too close. I was the stumbling feet in the dark fog, always asking for guidance.

Yet, I soon learned to become a collector, just like her. My grandmother's words have stuck with me ever since, " The one who loses their heart first, always ends up hurt."

When I was fifteen, my grandmother smeared lipstick onto me, as if applying war paint to a warrior. The sticks of eyeliner were my arrows.

My newest heart is a young, vivacious, girl. It is still fresh; its muscles swollen with life and the blood seeps between my fingertips. A perfect fist shape and a shade of deep blueish purple. This one may be the only one I regret taking.

I took her heart when she was sleeping in the dead of night. I also took her memories of us, hidden in a wooden box that I keep in my coat pocket wherever I go. Now, whenever I go to sleep, I imagine hearing her howls in the wind, her bloodied, bare, feet scraping across the ground as she now hunts for me, and her heart. I had collected nine hearts before her. They lay peacefully underneath my bed and the sound of their thumping under the floorboards was my lullaby.

The first heart I had collected kept me awake many sleepless nights; the constant thudding kept my eyes fluttering open in fear, but after a while I got used to it. It soon became white noise; part of my life. Part of who I was. We spent summers together by the beaches, dipping our feet into the water, and laying down onto the sand. Her hair blended in with the sand, her skin was the color of the rays of light beaming down. Her laugh was the waves lapping onto the shore, and her eyes were a coldwater blue. In those coldwater blue eyes, I saw a reflection though. It was a familiar one, and I was brought back to when I was sixteen.

My grandmother's disappointed expression, her eyes were flat, her perfectly glossed lips, pursing into a tight line. Tension hung in the air, knives in the form of words conquered her mouth.

"It's a shame youre wasting your lessons on girls..."

Holding hands, we'd walk barefoot down the road together. My red, splatter painted, fingertips sinking into her sterilized palm. I noticed the little things as we walked, how when she smiled one eye would squint a bit more than the other, how when she walked she would swing her hips slightly. How innocent she looked..

In the middle of a hot August day, we lay in the shade of a willow tree, taking deep breaths of humid air, trying to squint out the streaks of light streaming from in between the leaves. She had turned to me, propping up on her side and looked at me with her gentle eyes. Those eyes seemed to captivate me with every breath I took. She told me that she needed me, and I felt myself pull away from her touch. She needed me? Terror and anxiety boggled my mind, and I could feel myself being lured in, her eyes were so innocent and full of good intentions. Full of love, full of wonder, curiosity, and a small sense of loss could be seen if you look hard enough. The roles had been reversed; she had my beating heart in her hand, able to pull my strings like a puppeteer would do with their marionette dolls.

This scared me, I always had the upper hand, and I was losing it slowly. I watched her carve out my heart, placing it in a small wooden box near and dear to her chest; the worst part was she didn't even know she was doing it. I tried many times to reach out and snatch back the wooden box that held my heart. Poisonous words seeped through my teeth, as I silently begged on my knees for her to give my heart back. She would just laugh lightly, kiss my cheek, and run off again down the sandy beaches, leaving footprints behind. This is when I knew I had to steal it back from her.

I spent relentless hours, pacing my room, staring at my ceiling, wishing some answers would spit back out at me as I listened to the beat of nine hearts beneath my floorboard. They sang to me, telling me I had lost my own heart to a young lady with a laugh that reminded me of bare feet running along warm sand, with hair that blended into the golden sand; the one whose skin radiated like the sun.

The young girl with the coldwater blue eyes.