Once upon a time, a man took a picture. The colors were vibrant, bouncing off dark brown skin that shone with sunlight’s kisses and wrinkled upon itself with age. The deep set brown eyes leapt off the photograph, saying something profound, but the photographer did not hear it.
The photograph made rounds throughout the World, winning him accolades and praise that thundered from hands and eyes and wallets. They gazed upon the face, admiring the colors, amazed at the emotion the photographer had captured. They did not ask him what those eyes said and assumed it was a language, a thought, an emotion that required his interpretation. But he had not heard it. He would not have been able to tell them even if they had asked.
Had he asked that many-times-copied face a question, would he have understood the significance of the answer? Now we gaze upon it, gawking at the folds marking each passing challenge, each significant circumstance, every battle won, but we still do not know what those eyes are saying.
We are lost in a sea of forgetfulness, where intention convolutes messages seeping through eyes darkened by age. A sea that sweeps away whispers that ripple through skin reaching out to touch our own to reclaim us.
And yet we gawk on. Gasping demurely as laden photograph after laden photograph march in front of our drugged eyes, the last vestiges of a proud, hororable people fading away.