Letterbox Eyes
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Penang,
Malaysia
Saturday, August 4, 2007
They floated through the Penang airport, faceless black ghosts accompanying men in shorts, T-shirts, sandals; men who would blend in on a Vancouver street.
Beneath their drapery, the women expressed themselves in other ways. The cuffs of jeans poked out, and smooth pedicured feet in jewelled sandals. One used hers as a canvas, bearing a dazzling universe of rhinestones on her back.
Then there was the woman with the letterbox eyes. I was at the currency exchange when she swept by, and knew instinctively, Don't look at her eyes; don't look at her eyes.
I looked. She caught me up in them, daring me to see her. Rimmed in kohl and set in the green of peacock feathers, they opened wide for an instant as she delivered a flash of dark light-the summoning of all her power in those eyes, enough to haunt a lifetime.
