Knowing Virginia Woolf's Eyes

by Melina Papadopoul​os

Virginia's eyes have horse sadness in them,
a mare's wet vision that blurs everything
into a concave illusion. The distance has vertigo.
If she stares off for too long,
she might trip the landscape on a cataract.
Maybe it's a step up from crying.

Somewhere on the iris,
houseflies go into orbit.
They threaten to make
their razor blade noises
in the ears or eyes of something not yet dead,
if they can make it there
before Virginia locks her lashes
for the night.
They know that they see too much at once;
they have no corners in their eyes
for distorting shadows. They're all
treated with the same farewell buzz.

Virginia is still learning
how to look into the distance
without turning her back, her head.
when she's alone with a noise,
she tells herself to listen
for the same thing:
the galloping of her blood, veins cantering.
Virginia knows that Earth moves fast.
It moves so fast that the only way
to slow it down is to trip it,
rabbit trap it in words.
It'd save the nameless a whole lot
of suffering. When they cry out,
they'd have something more to shout
than God, God, God…
that man's mind is ringing
and now he believes he's got
his own thunderheads in his ears.

Virginia's eyes have horse sadness
in them. When she catches reveries
of stallions in them, she remembers
what to look for in loneliness.
She could cry them away, she could
soften her gaze into a lament,
but she doesn't want to blur this landscape any more
than it already has been.

Fly wings in her eyes.
nothing is a step up from blindness.