MONOLOGUE OF A PROTAGONIST THAT ISN'T TOTALLY ME

I recently found out that the reason blue eyes are more sensitive to the sun than brown eyes is because the blue irises scatter and transmit more unwanted light into the retina than brown irises. Those first five minutes of walking into the sunlight are hard as hell. I shield my eyes, groan, and complain to my brown-eyed friends. They always respond with, “If only I could be so lucky…” and I think this is an interesting choice of words because good luck never looks my way.

I inherited blue eyes from my mother. Her eyes are currently sewn shut, dried out, and six feet under ground (are they even still blue?). Every morning when I wash my face and look in the mirror, I can’t tell if I’m looking at my eyes or hers. I brush my bangs out of eyes and say, “Oh, there you are. Good morning.” I then pull open the cabinet mirrors so that they are facing each other to create an infinite amount of mirrors that line a never ending hallway. Have you ever tried that? It’s like looking into another dimension. It’s terrifying. I like to do this and think about what is going to be at the end of the hallway: an open doorway spilling light, an alternate version of myself doing the exact same thing, my mother. But you can never see the end.

I also recently discovered that the blue pigment is created by means of Rayleigh scatter, which is the elastic scattering of light by tiny particles that are smaller than the wavelength of light. I hardly know what that means, but basically it’s the same optical phenomenon that makes the sky blue. With this information I think of my eyes as puddles, left behind after a harsh storm, rippling the blue skies above. Or the eyes above.