Red Eyes

Your eyes are burning. They are red, irritated, perhaps swollen. As though someone had thrown sand into them — or as though tears were coming that never quite arrive. Red eyes are an alarm signal that is hard to overlook. Other people notice it immediately. And you wave it off, say something about a draft or an allergy. But your body speaks a different language. It shows on the outside what you are pressing down on the inside.

The redness is congested blood, congested energy, congested expression. Your eyes want to release something — and you won't let them. The eye lies exposed, moist, sensitive — and that is precisely where its message lives. Your eyes are showing you that you carry something tender inside, something you can no longer keep hidden. Something in you is pressing outward, something you have held under lock and key for a long time.

And that something is your feelings.