They say the eyes are the window to the soul. The eyes speak words unsaid, the eyes pour out emotions not yet felt. Mystery is also their portion. Eyes speak more than the mouth does. Do you know how it feels to look into the eyes of the one person you have ever truly loved and known that ... Complete the statement in the comment box.
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It’s not that Ice-cream Sundays were bad. If anything they were great… among the best. This is what happened that first Ice-cream Sunday. He liked surprises. He lived to surprise me in different ways whether great or small. You could see it in his eyes, the happiness when he unveiled something I probably didn’t expect and I melted in all ways possible; my cheeks would flush bright red and I’d be turned into a giggling fool. So that first Ice-cream Sunday he was very persistent on our usual ritual; going for a long walk in the wild. He carried a black paper bag but would not show me its contents. So after walking at a brisk pace enjoying endless banter we reached our destination, a raised piece of ground covered in rock. Yesterday nostalgia hit me in the face. It walked up to me and slapped me senseless. I was dazed by its might, its power, and its guts even. I’d kicked it away so how dare it march up to me with a puffed chest and haughty eyes and demand space in my memory! How dare nostalgia lead me to hopeless thinking, killing my brain cells for probably nothing I can change. See, nostalgia went through my memory bank and skipped many days I’d rather remember. It by-passed graduation parties (speaking of graduation, I finally graduated, cap, gown and all that jazz :-) ), birthday parties, family functions, unforgettable vacations, and exciting events. Nostalgia passed all those up for ‘Ice-cream Sundays’. That was among the first of very many ice-cream Sundays. As beautiful and blissful as those memories were they chose the wrong day. Today was a day for anything else; birthdays, hangouts, weddings but definitely today was not a day for memories such as Ice-cream Sundays. I loved this spot. This was most definitely THE spot; the perfect place to clear your brain, the best place to zone out and gaze into the open space ahead of you, no doubt it was the chosen location to hang out with your beloved on quiet evenings when all you wanted was time to yourselves. From here I could see the vast land ahead of me; the buildings in the nearby Athi River town were visible. Smoke was rising in the far distance from nearby industries, there were some green houses in the distance, and if you squinted hard enough you would not miss the cars on the far off Mombasa road. However, what blew my mind away was not all that; it was the sunset. I’d watch the colors change from a deep orange to bright amber to a light yellow then to a golden tinge that ran across the whole skyline until finally the big fiery ball would slowly disappear into nothingness and invite the pitch dark night to take charge. And as always on this one day we were in time for that precious moment. I chose a rock that we could both sit on and we both did so. He smiled and took out the ice-cream and a spoon. “This is for you,” he said ruefully. It’s not that I was a hard girl to impress but these are the things that gave him joy. I smiled up to him and thanked him (yes my cheeks were scarlet red as I ‘aawwed’ at him). I had a serious sweet tooth so it was indeed very sweet of him (See what I did there?) to have brought me a whole tub; not the cheap common kind mind you but the expensive type. So I peeled off the cover and we ate as we watched the sunset as we spoke of days passed, days are and days to come. He held me close and when my hands were too cold to hold the tub of ice-cream anymore he took it from me and fed me. And as the sun hid behind the distant hills and bid us farewell we finished the last drop of ice-cream. Slowly we walked back to school hand in hand as the distant Athi River lights came on, bidding us farewell.
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