brown eyes

“Hey,” she said.

The wind blew strongly off of the Chukchi Sea and cold air settled bitterly over Point Hope.

Even his bones were cold.

Her brown eyes looked deeply and kindly into his eyes. 

This made a small warmth in the middle of his belly that moved out toward his hands and feet.

Her eyes were like the earth, like the newly plowed rows he walked each day of his life, like the tough and tender bark of the peach trees he reached up and into during South Carolina summers on Charleston farms, like the blanket his abuela made from the colors of the flowers and fields of the beautiful mountains of El Salvador.

“You know,” he thought as he looked back into her eyes, “They’re just like my abuela’s blanket. They wrap me and keep me warm and loved.”