His eyes were dilated

Bittersweet Sensory

“Hello”
“What’s up?” Nick asked as he sped up to walk beside his schoolmate.


His eyes were dilated. The sun—bright reddish-orange…he walked his head to the ground where it did not hurt to look. The ground was dull—colors that is. Earth tones: gray, brown, green…simple. Looking above led to the harsh stigma bleeding el sol, the relinquishment, intensity, and irony of tenderness.He bent his head to the ground, or maybe just slightly downward so that the angle was obtuse to the light.

“I can’t go, I have to go to the dentist,” this reply stretched out to a passer-by walking in the opposite direction that had asked him if he was going to play kickball after school.
“-Gotta cavity huh?” Nick interjected with a sly look on his face.

The cold air was handing the hands of this vulnerable soul a feeling that everything around isolation was warm. This metaphor is like dry ice to the touch of skin. That simile is difficult to understand. This is what I really mean it feels like- a hand can feel scalded and scolded from the iron left on to warm and straighten a necktie shirt. It can taste the toasting and tainting from an oven releasing a testy love. A hand can even burn from the battering flame beside the hot torch that flies out toward you from the family of Flares’ all held together in a free for all fire only to be smothered by the tie around a neck that restricts the breath away from a blue flame now fighting for air. Yea, it is hard to explain the feeling of an isolated hand in a November air. It is something you have to describe in two forms, because we don’t really know the form it’s (or it is) in. Words can mean whatever you want them to personify. Don't let me describe a metaphor in terms of a simile that correlates to an extended metaphor that explains the hands’ feeling of isolation from warmth. Words personify whatever you want them to mean.

“I had a cavity before, I had like five shots of novocaine too! There was blood all over the place, a lot of needles, and sharp things!” Nick was an obvious looking kid. He didn’t have an accent. He was from Ohio. People from Ohio don’t talk like northerners, easterners, westerners or southerners. He looked husky, and had on lay-ErS of clothing, which added to his size as he dwarfed the friend (if he was even that) who walked next to him on the right. Nick was talkative, space intrusive, and incredulous of everything. The only thing I could not believe was the number of novocaine shots Nick supposedly received at the dentist, and the fact that he was quick to respond to his own question about having a cavity.

His cheeks blushed through the many different ways of saying the word cold. The face was what it was. Some people might say he looked almost sad, quiet, unsettled but perhaps content. Though, in a way he was laughing. There is much speculation about his face, both serious and funny. It was calm. Not excited, not depressed— it may not of even been calm. But the response given from it was not such any. More or less it was open. He was not expressing what was going to happen, or what did, NOR what was. The art on his face led me to believe nothing. There was no need for him to prove anything. All I knew is that he had a dentist appointment.


“It’s freezing out here!” Another obvious comment under all of the layers Nick was wearing.
“ .”

I was a fitting response on the path that he was on; he wasted no energy or time on something as trivial as that question. So many things need to be said in this world of voice and dialogue…they need to be asked…to be learned…to be concluded… Shakespeare was concerned with To Be, or not To Be? Dumb question. But a great question for musicians, writers, and creative geniuses that want to go nowhere. For norms, so to speak, it is still a question. Dentists have one of the highest suicide rates among all people who are classified under occupation. Two opposite spectrums of people, words, and meanings share the same struggle. A struggle that plagues intellects that have the ability to think but not feel; and poets, painters, musicians and artists that can feel only to be treated like children when they speak of thoughts that have no proof but the one inside their burning hand. But it was there on the right———a squirrel in the grass searching for nuts to bury during the winter hibernation. It chewed off the casing of the fallen acorn, and held the remains eye level.


“I wish it wasn’t cold as hell- this weather-” as he stopped abruptly, sighed, and looked to the side. Describing Nick could go on forever, or it could just take a second. He was a dirty-mouthed eight-year-old seemingly obsessed with gut reactions that were made for attention, “It couldn’t be any colder!”


“ .” Still no response from the introvert.

The angle at which his eyes slanted showed a path some feet or yards, metric units ahead. It showed the distance needed to be reached. I don’t know how he reached it. A few feet went by____ each step taken was independently chiseled out. One-step, two,
and a slight gimp in the leg, not because of pain, just because.
Maybe it wasn’t a gimp, just natural progression
of the walk. It was a nice stroll,
cautious, yet extremely
smooth.


His eyes were dilated. He saw the relentless sun. Sensitive to only the touch from within- improvised thoughts from feeling, from somewhere- improvised feelings from thoughts, from somewhere came and went never showing up in a frown or smile.

I saw him look to his side as he felt an arm being put around Him. He walked the same, looked the same- remaining steady and patient in his own thoughts. It was his mother picking him up from school to go to the dentist, and no thought, action, word or emotion could satisfy the description of feeling he had when she gave him a hug.


I saw through blushed skin in the cold air, while commotion of a passing plane left a faint sound of noise pollution and insignificant dialogue from Nick persisted on that all I wanted to do was say hello without all of the conclusions that go along with the word as I stepped up to my mom.
“God!” I cried while hugging her for all the reasons in the world.