Sunflower Eyes

As I lie here at night, finding myself wide awake at 2:00 am, my mind begins to wonder from future, to now, from now till the past, noting the changes and challenges of things that everyone must face through life in order to become who they are today.



I began to trail away into another land, a land of flowers all stopping and staring in the same direction, and the child that needed them more then anything.

The time of the sunflowers.

Hot July in Kansas, nothing can really describe the sensation of what it's like. Hot at night, hotter in the day, tea in the afternoon, coffee in the morning. This was a time when parents didn't worry about their kids playing outside in the heat, before SPF was nearly triple digits, when kids went out to have fun.

The boy loved going outside, seeing his friends, discovering new things, and wondering who really did create the railroad tracks by his house. Though none of the boys noticed it, everywhere they turned were flowers, sunflowers to be exact. The nickname of their state held true with each breeze from the south. The flowers and their stalks swayed with each light push of the invisible hand around the boys. However, none of them thought much of the flowers, except one.

He had a secret with the flowers.

As the boys left to go to their homes for the evening, he would walk back into his own. His mother and himself would sit to the meal in the house. The boy talked of his day with his friends, his mother nodded up and down in acceptance of her sons learning. However fear was in her eyes, uncertainty in her voice as she slowly watched the clock chime in at 7, at 8, and finally at 9. By the time 9 had hit the boy had been sent to bed. No air conditioning in the house so he opened his window. The child loved his window, it was his portal to the world outside, his escape. He would sit there on the edge of his bed for hours just watching the outside world pass him by.

The clock struck 10:00 pm.

The silence of the summer night was ended with the slamming of the front door, the dropping of a box and the sound of the bottle hitting the table. The boy knew what was next, the talking escalated as his mother tried to hold her own, but he overpowered her, he raised his voice, she fell to the ground, and the whole time the boy sat in his room staring out the window. As the voices grew louder and the walls started to shake the boy whispered out his window, "Are you there?" The movement of the flowers showed him their attention.

"Hey guys! I've got to be quiet, mommy and daddy are mad again. I don't know why, but someday it's going to end and we'll be a happy family again."

And for the rest of the night the boy would share his stories of the day with his closest friends, his family of flowers for the night. Knowing that the next night they'd be sitting there waiting for him again, waiting for his voice, his stories, his happiness of the simplicity of his life because he knew nothing different.

Eventually the flowers disappeared and the boy cried himself to sleep those lonely nights. The harsh reality of knowing in his mind that nothing last forever. The flowers were gone, there was a empty seat at the table at all times now in the kitchen, the boys world continued to crumble around him.

13 years later the boy found himself talking to another person, a "real friend" and while he was talking and laughing in the summer breeze she looked at him and said, "You have sunflower eyes, they're beautiful, have they always been that way?" The boy swallowed his pride and sat down next to her and began to describe his first friends, his true friends, the flowers that never left during the summers, they protected him from anything bad that happened in his home. Looking in his mirrors today remind him of who was with him in the past.



3:00 am. I'm still sitting here thinking about sleep, yet nothing is coming...who knows...maybe I'll think about sunflowers and that'll put me at rest.