Joanna Fuhrman

The host's girlfriend is barely seen. She's busy giving away wild animals to reluctant guests. I agree to take a snake-dog, maybe an electric eel, but when I feel its sharp teeth in my shoulder, I start to worry about the future welfare of our fragile cat, the precarious order of our rented home, and remember I am supposed to be looking for someone.... A half-wolf, half-elephant cracks through the walls of the peeling wallpapered bedroom where my former student in a fuschia robe and curlers sits by a lighted make-up mirror. The shadows off elongated fake eyelashes are as dark as the branches of an evening tree. The hovering body of a fiery sparrow is almost transparent, like flute music or an idea. I turn my back and finally, I spot her my friend, the host. She's sipping rum punch from a martini glass; her whole body appears to be smiling, glowing, and I don't know what to think. I know she doesn't drink, hasn't in decades, and I wonder what's suddenly changed, but then I remember the cancer won, my friend isn't actually here, there is no party, there was never a house.

The eyes on a face have brought me sadness: the right eye searching for seams in ripped fishnets; the left eye lost and wandering the dark; the eye of the baby god crawling behind a couch in the moist suburb where we planned our escape from video games and grilled cheese; the eye of a whale we met in a dream who spit us out so we could make the 8 o’clock screening of On Golden Pond; the eye of the clock, blinking when the oboe wailed like a burning shofar; the eye inside the eye, curled up—a sprouting lima bean, remembering the nineteenth century, those rosy drapes; the eyes of missing finger tips, of sad afternoons in French cafés in Dayton, Ohio; the eyes on the very real parrot who sits on the shoulders of a wax actor dressed as a pirate; the eyes of an actress, pretending to be my mom; the eyes of my father, sleeping on a train, dreaming about miniature crashing planes; the eyes of a swimming pool, looking up or down everyone’s swimsuits and into their souls; the eyes in love songs written by mean men; the eyes in the painting lost in a fire where we tried to save the ancient cat; the eyes underneath tap shoes clicking like teeth; the eyes of Fred Astaire, never blinking, even to kiss in the dark; the eyes of the state of Texas secretly tattooed on everyone’s ass, and the eyes on the billboard, ripped and faded from rain like the eyes of the best waitress on the Upper West Side who knows everyone’s order, even those of customers she’s never met. Can you hear  the eyes under my eyes? They steal other people’s dreams to use them for ad copy. Here are the eyes of a man who’d be my husband if he hadn’t married my twin, and there are the eyes of the judge who divorced them, blue as his tie. I forget the eye color of the first man I loved—what color was my hat when we cried in the snow? The whites of everyone’s eyes swirl together in silent music. Nothing like the closed eyes of a flamenco dancer, eating a dripping hamburger by the highway. Instead it is the right eye of a teacher when she touches her student; the eyes inside my mouth and the eyes outside your mouth; the eyes of the writer and reader, a broken vase and a whole petal; the eyes on what you thought of as a cunt and the eyes on what I thought of as a cock; the small eyes on the open book and the bigger eyes of the closed book; the eyes I swallow when we talk, and the eyes that fly above us in sleep.

You were never a man in the television sense of the word. I was never a wild Slinky in the sex-club sense of a toy. You were never a tobacco store in the Modernist sense of a trope. I was never a snowdrop in the candy store sense of a treat. You were never Day-glo in the fashionista sense of a scarf. I was never withyouallthetime in the username sense of a self. You were never a strumpet in the toothache sense of an insult. I was never a tooting horn in the childhood sense of a game. You were never a hole-in-my-heart in the country singer sense of a vista. I was never a paper doll in the pyromaniac sense of a pal. You were never a parenthesis in the phony secret sense of a sign. I was never red lipstick in the pulp novel sense of a threat. You were never a word in the mystic sense of an obstacle. I was never a shaking castanet in the midnight sense of a song.