The Eyes of a Small Child

That day the sun burned like mad. Sounds filled the air of the land: the shouts of children playing in fields, the shrieks of people clashing with the powers-that-be in some forgotten square, the clanking of towering steel buildings and the muttering of prayers by the elderly humbly accepting their fate.

All the same, the sun continued to shine and burn like mad, waiting because it wanted to make, in any way it could, those two little eyes look at it. At that midday moment in the middle of nowhere a child had just been born. He hadn’t opened his little eyes yet, but that moment was not far off. It was for these two little eyes that the sun waited so that it could give him some of its brightness.

And lo! The child opened his eyes. He tried to see the world around him. Yet he saw nothing but a bright light and the blue sky.

But the child could not yet speak and the only thing he dared to wonder with all its might was an unspoken “Where am I?”

He didn’t hear anyone answer until a voice from above whispered, “In the real world, on Earth.” It was that bright ball in the sky, whose heat the child could now feel. “Why am I here?” the child wondered again.

And then the sun replied, “You were born into this world to see it and then leave. That is why I’m trying to shine as hard as I can today: so that you can remember the brightest and loveliest image I can give you.”

Then the child tried to weep. But he didn’t have time. No sooner had he taken a breath than he left without having uttered a word, a sound or even a sob.

He left as silently as he had come. This was the sound that terrified the sun more than any other: the mute silence of leaving, the sound you cannot hear but you know is there.

 

For the children born into a world where they are not given the chance to live and feel on their lips the salt of even one tear.

Reviews

[DiskartetHaraya]

The impact the last two paragraphs had on me was brutal. The tall tale, which would have worried my skeptic mind otherwise, now seems shrunken into bits; the magnitude of raw, simple, quiet, and non-dramatic death taking the fore. The exaggeration works for me. Enough of dry, heavy stories that don't make us feel anything. No matter how colorful we make a story anyway, a tragedy is a tragedy. This is so bad, in a good way.