His Hazel Eyes

His dark hazel eyes
Burn red as his fingers slide
Amidst his thick black locks.


Broken from within he
Falls into a fading reality;
He gropes for air but it slips
Through his hands as he screams.


Quietly bleeding from
The swollen wounds left
Scrawled upon his back,
He lays there doubled over from
The pain he knows, yet wills to leave.


Through the waterfalls
Falling down his face
He sees his mirrored self.
A glazed over face and sunken eyes
Greet him through the reflection.


Fear overtakes him and
He crumples to his knees.
He feels like he's slowly
Dying from the pain


His tormentor heaps upon him, but
He will not break even though his
Hazel eyes are snuffed of the twinkle within.


I wrote this for a good friend of mine during a night when he called me and he was so far gone that I could barely reach him.  It was as if every word I spoke fell on rotten earth and spoiled before its roots could grab hold of the life pulsing deep within the dirt.
Nothing I said made it through to him.
I was helpless...
I watched him fall and there was nothing I could do about it.

There's only been two people I've met who can read people as well as I can, if not better, and he is one of them.  The worst part of being able to read people is seeing the hurt, feeling it, and knowing just how bad they're hurting, but not being able to fix it.
When he was going through all of this, my heart hurt so badly, but all I could do was pray and hope that was enough of a rope to yank him out of his 6-foot hole.

Eventually, it was.  That and a good listening ear and a lot of firm advice.

I don't know that he ever fully understood just how far his pain had buried him, but I can tell you that he's still trapped behind some things.  He's a stubborn man though.  He's vulnerable and makes himself open to others relatively easy, but he's stubborn and too defensive for an "outsider" to enter enough to help remove the rubble from his chest.
Now, his girlfriend just happens to be my sister and she's not as good at reading the underlying layers of people as I or a couple of his other friends are - which is unfortunate because I feel like she would be able to get through to him when the rest of us clearly cannot.

Cj, I hope you read this and I want you to know that no matter what happens, I'm always going to be your "big sister" and I will always be here for you.  You're very dear to my heart.  You are a good man and I'm grateful that my sister has you in her life and I'm glad that I get to be a part of it as well.
I love you, Cj.

Until our next encounter,
Lauren