The Green in Her Brown

She opens them for the first time, two small almonds, dark and shining, drinking in the world. I have waited for this. Nine months of wondering, of dreaming, of asking the universe what color it would paint her gaze. Would they mirror mine, green like summer grass? Or her mother's, deep as night?

The universe answers.

Brown. Warm, endless brown.

And I fall.

They search, they blink slow and heavy, and then, then, they find me. My breath catches. She doesn't know it yet, but she owns me now. These little brown eyes, so new, so full of unspoken words, bring tears to my green.

I am lost in them.

She will never remember this first moment, but I will. I will carry it with me like a photograph pressed between the pages of my life, returning to it again and again. A story starts right here. I'm her first home, and someday she'll be where I rest, tucked away in her heart.

Time will move as it does, faster than I want. Her brown eyes will widen in delight when she sees me across the room, they will squeeze shut when she laughs, they will roll when she's stubborn, and they will soften when she understands. And I will love her in every gaze she gives me.

One day, she will cry, and I won't be there to wipe her tears. One day, she will search for my green eyes and find only the echoes of them in memories, in old photographs, in dreams she struggles to hold onto upon waking.

But I will not be gone.

When she needs me, she will find me in the world we once walked together.

I will be on the leaves of spring, dancing in the wind as we did when she was small, spinning under the sun, arms outstretched, laughing.

I will be in the ocean after the storm, when the waves steady and turn to glass, the color of my eyes in their calmest moments.

I will be in the soft bed of moss beneath her feet, a place to rest when the world feels too heavy.

And when she looks into the mirror and sees her own brown eyes, I will be there too, because my love has always lived inside them.

One day, she'll see things the way I do, and I'll keep on living through what she sees. I was born to die so she could keep going, and loving her has shown me what it means to live on after I'm gone.

My green eyes will close long before her brown ones, but love like this does not disappear. It lingers, it shifts, it becomes part of the earth and the wind and the sea.

In the end, I won't leave her behind. I'll leave me within her.

And when she looks for me, I will always be looking back.