New Eyes

He looked at the world through new eyes; eyes he found at the Salvation Army beneath piles and piles of In Styles. The eyes looked large in his smallish hands, but once placed properly were dwarfed by his lollipop head and low, cro-magnon brow. Dainty eyes, he called them. Eyes to be tender by, or with, or to. With these eyes, he thought, I can begin the day with poetry and end with soft glances across candlelight.

By midday, that first day, the left one fell out and down into a sewer grate. He chased it, but was much too late. Goodbye left tender eye, and with one tender eye left, he went back to the Salvation Army looking for a replacement.

Amid the stacks and stacks of National Geographics he found a proper set, but already having a right he only took the left. Here's hoping it fits, he thought, as he popped it in its slot. Snugly this one fit, almost to popping. And off he went with a tiny tender right eye and bugged out left.

Through his new eyes the world looked soft and insane, lovely and stank, sighing and ow-wooooo-gah. A woman walked by on his right, a lady by all accounts, and smiled at him with his sweet little eye. He turned to look and the hideous left sent her straight into a run. His right eye wanted to cry and his left wanted a doughnut.

One night, as his right eye slept, his left stayed awake singing off-key about bottles of beer taken down from a wall. When the song ended, his left eye slapped the right awake, then pretended to be asleep. The right knew better, but thought better of retaliating.

All through breakfast the left eye smoked cigars and listened to sports news, guffawing at the perpetual biting commentaries. The right eye closed both from fatigue and ignominy. Soon the left eye would fall asleep on the couch and the right eye could listen to Debussy, read some Proust, admire the begonias.

He enjoyed his new eyes enough, despite the frightened looks of children, women, men, dogs, giraffes, and insects all. However, he eventually went back to his old eyes. He returned the new two to the Salvation Army, pretending to read an old SI as he popped out the left and an antiquated copy of the New Yorker as he gently slid out the right. They stayed among the piles and stacks of magazines there at the Salvation Army. Neither eye found its partner, former or new. Nobody ever adopted them as new eyes again because nobody wants an eye unless its part of a pair.

He looked at the world through his old eyes. And everything looked the same.