I remember when I was in grade school, I'd pass the upper years fearlessly. I wasn't intimidated by them in the least. They were all lined up for assembly, and I was late, so I pushed past everybody with my huge backpack and folder.
Being the visual person that I am, I remember scanning each and every one of their faces. I quickly studied the shape of their eyes, the sharpness of their noses, the perch of their lips, the amount of hair on their eyebrows. And the first thing I thought was, "they all look the same."
I barely saw any difference at all. Maybe a slight difference in the degree of roundness in their eyes, and the slight lightness and darkness of the shade of colour inside, and the way they smiled, each a little differently. But that was all. Everything else seemed pretty much the same.
And then I remember during one of my years in high school, I thought about it again. I remembered that moment in grade school. And I looked around at my new set of friends. I noticed the changes, the differences I had never seen in the people I looked at before. How different the eye shapes really are when you look at them up close, and how much of a change the shade of color the eyes can be, and how even the eyelids can alter the eye shape altogether; how different noses really are in the way they stretch down the face, the bridge, even the shape of the nostrils; how different smiles really are, how some lips are thin, others thick, others plump, and what each smile held, a different story.
just thinking.
and it burns, but it burns out golden.
