Painted Eyes

through transparent clouds

For world collage day

i see harmonies behind your ponderings,
desolate and fragile.

i see unsung songs hovering in transparent clouds above your wandering ideals.

i paint your eyes because i am able,
yet still you see nothing.

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There is a loneliness in perceiving what another cannot, in beholding harmonies within a soul that remain unheard even by the one who carrieth them. For there are men who move through the world as strangers unto themselves, bearing within them unsung songs, fragile mercies, and wounds so long neglected they have ceased even to search them. And sometimes, in our longing to love them rightly, we persuade ourselves that tenderness alone can awaken sight, that if we paint the eyes carefully enough, the inward man shall at last behold what hath always stood before him.

Yet affection cannot bestow vision where the spirit remaineth asleep. One may stand before another in perfect sincerity and still remain unseen, for the deepest blindness is not of the eyes, but of the heart. And so there is grief in loving what cannot yet perceive itself fully, in reaching toward someone through layers of glass, memory, illusion, and silence, only to find that awakening is a thing no human hand can wholly accomplish. Some doors are opened only by God.

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12)

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What do you think of my new collage? What does it bring to mind for you?

If you’d like to support my collage and erasure work, you can Buy Me a Coffee <3

Here are a few more of my recent collage pieces if you’d like to wander a little further:

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