Five Seconds From Fifteen
I was told, in a place of imprecise time, that I had held my eyes open for fifteen minutes. My left pupil was made blurry in return. A man taunted and taught me to breathe through my irises, a lesson I only imagined to hold, though one I returned to when clocks could hold memories again and the bidirectionality of looking and being looked into was reduced to myself and a machine in the late hours of long nights.
I have since bested the machine, tripled the quarter of an hour and purposefully closed lids with the acknowledgement of an incomplete record. Satan stands next in line.
I invite you to sit in awareness of the disparity between seeing and looking. Movement is relief. Stillness is the reiteration of attention.