Nine days old and I still can’t tell the colour of his eyes.
In his olive-green jumpsuit, they’re most certainly green.
Sometimes I spot veins of caramel and gold—they’re hazel.
When his mood turns his eyes are infinite black. They suck all light from the room.
He looks over my shoulder out the window and they are blue. Every blue, lapis lazuli and blue jean and the shallows of Bora Bora.
They are in fact primordial grey. A pre-colour. They are becoming.
With these eyes that seem to change every day, he casts his newborn spell: pay attention. In the middle of fretting about tomorrow I see a hint of oak brown and I am here, now. I am present. His eyes are my spiritual teacher.
A friend comments that it can take a year for a baby’s eye colour to emerge. I tune out in case she blurts a spoiler. I know there’s a rubric for father with blue eyes and mother with brown, and occasionally my mind will dredge up from memory genetic probability tables I studied 20 years ago, big Rs and little rs in a mercifully fuzzy matrix without percentages. I don’t want to remember. I won’t give in to googling. I will watch his eyes become.
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