See/Unsee

Her eyes are closed but they are still open – she will not unsee what she's seen. But she knows that others will unsee what's as plain as the nose on their pale face. That they will ignore what they’ve seen, or turn it around in their mind, like a negative, until it shows the reverse. The image becomes something it is not. But she knows what the truth of that image is.

When someone else’s fingers hold down your eyelids - even if those fingers are invisible - that is one way of not seeing. But can you really not bat those fingers away? Have you grown to enjoy the gentle press of skin on orbital bone?

What if you choose to not see, if you choose to close your own eyes, to keep them closed, to batten them down and use your own muscular memory, your own corporeal power, to keep them shut?

Have you tried to not see, have you noticed when you have seen but wanted to unsee? Is someone always trying to direct your eyes one way or the other?

To unsee is to know you have seen but to try and roll back the images, as though they were on a spool of 35mm film. As though you could take the wafer-thin sheet and roll it back onto itself, maybe bury it too so it can never be found and developed.

Though how buried is anything that has been buried in the ground? If it comes from nature, it will itself turn to dust and be consumed by nature itself, and find new life in a tiny leaf. If it has been made by the hands of humans, from petroleum, it might be a plastic that can never disappear, so it will soon be found again. And petroleum comes from deep within the earth.

See/Unsee

So, some do not want to see what’s in front of their eyes. They do not want to see how their view of things, with their eyelids propped open by matchsticks, is clouded by a film of untruth.

But what she sees is the truth. That is why she could choose when to open or close her eyes.

Just how much others chose to unsee would be discovered after.