Iris

by Tori Bond

 
A gelatinous orb washed up at Iris’s feet, a softball-sized gift from the sea. She nudged it with her toe to reveal a cobalt blue eye peering up at her, capturing her in its gaze. She imagined a giant squid inching along the ocean floor in search of his precious sight. Or did some horrific event cause this tender creature to abort its own eye? She had days like that. More like years of blindly searching for the elusive thing just beyond her grasp—Ira.
 
She worked as an assistant to a handsome doctor, who loved eyes so much he became an optometrist, a tragic man who couldn’t look a person in the eye when he spoke. Could he not withstand the ocean of pain floating in the vitreous chamber? A glowing emptiness only he could see upon exam. She baked obsessively for him. He refused, patting his belly to indicate he was dieting. Could he not see the chunks of love she folded into her cookies and drizzled over the spiced Bundt cake? Iris was the only one to nibble her treats.
 
Their hushed conversations involved patient care, locating and updating records, requests for instruments, gels, liquids, and tissues, all communicated with his back to her. Their intimate moments consisted of her shimmying between the counter and his chair, her widening hips bumping his elbow or shoulder. Such an occurrence thrilled her. Ira responded by moving his chair two inches.
 
She set out to get fit and walked the beach daily, daydreaming about their rendezvous at the end of her journey to slimness. It was a long walk. Ten pounds lighter, no noticeable noticing. Twenty pounds gone—Ira failed to lose his composure with her in the darkness of the exam room. Thirty pounds lost left her feeling small.  
 
The grey ocean rocked at her feet. It had rained that morning and clouds crowded the horizon. The wind frazzled her hair. A baseball cap flung at her and plastered itself to her thigh. Not a soul was out walking. No one shell hunting, no fishermen casting lines, no children building sandcastles. The storm had scared them home. The macrocosm of the beach laid bare the microcosm of her heart.
 
Her imagined life with Ira had kept her company for so long she didn’t know herself without his adoring gaze across the candlelit table set for one, his invisible arms wrapped around her as she fell off to sleep in her lonely bed. His affection was a ghost of a wish haunting her day and night. Wrapped in her own arms, she let the hungry waves devour her sneakers and ankles.
 
Iris gathered the eyeball and rinsed it in the waves. She coddled its slippery wetness like an infant fresh from the womb and stared into its blue stare. She sank deeply into the world of squid eye and imagined an ocean so blue it hurt. Watery illusions of super jellyfish danced to an invisible rhythm, house-sized whales lumbered weightlessly with ballerina grace. A perceptive organ this large must’ve been capable of penetrating the surface of things; seeing their invisible essence. The thought sent an erotic current through Iris’s body. What would it feel like to be embraced by eight arms? Hundreds of suction cups, like little kisses, nestled in the crook of her neck, across her thighs and breasts. Could she stand the gaze of a love that big? What would the squid think of this large land creature staring back at him? Perhaps shy like the doctor, he’d squirt ink and race into the murky darkness. She shuffled home with the eyeball and the intent to find a lovely way to present it to the doctor. 
 
She imagined giving Ira the eyeball floating in a glass canister, decorated with electric blue stones, seaweed growing skyward, and her love bubbling up out of her. “See how much I love you?” Her imagination turned on her, twisted her fantasy into the reality she could not face. He stared at his shoes, refusing to see her gift.
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