—I REMEMBER ALL THE FINAL WORDS YOU TOLD ME

My Eyelids Think They’re Something Else

But first I should tell you that my eyelids are known to tell lies.  They say, We schizophrenic, dyslexic and corrosive.  They say, We provide shelter from the storm.  They say, We have killed a number of random hitchhikers and buried them in the desert where they’ll never be found.

My Ex liked to lick them, my eyelids, she with her serpent’s tongue, so long and scaley, like a sundried salamander without legs.  Sometimes she’d slather my pupils with bubbly saliva.  Other times, she nibbled my eyelashes off.  She deemed such acts erotic.  The wetter, the better, she said.  And since I was a virgin, since I had never scaled a sexual peak, let alone reached one, i never balked at her proclivities, never thought them odd in any way.

My new wife no longer looks me in the eyes, no longer notices the strange strength residing in my eyelids.  I try to surprise her in the morning, leaning over her side of the bed, hovering there, waiting for her to wake, but she’s onto me and now wears an eye mask under an eye mask, both of which are overlaid on top of two Band-Aids.

I plan on giving my eyelids to science.  In fact, I have them right here, sealed in this Mason jar filled with disinfectant.  The challenge will be getting them to the lab in time.  I can hear my wife in the other room, on the phone, her corrosive voice trembling as she says, “Hurry, please.”