A Little Girl

Say you meet a little girl with her eyes closed. You ask why she never opens them. She tries to explain that there’s no reason for her to do so.

“Why not? Are you blind?”, you ask her. She doesn’t know. “Don’t you wanna know?”.

“What for?”, she asks you back.

“To see, if you can.”

“What if I can’t?”

“Then you would’ve lost nothing.”

“I would then know that I cannot see,” she worries. “I don’t want that.”

“Do you prefer to never see, than to know if you can?”

“…than to know that I can’t”, she corrects you.

“You don’t know that”, you remind her.

“I’d like to keep it that way”, she’s decided.

“I understand I won’t be able to talk you into opening your eyes”, you wonder, as she agrees. “Even if I tell you there are beautiful things out here?”

“But I’m ‘out here’, too”

“You’re not”, you declare. “You don’t want to be.”

“I want to be.”

“Saying that is not enough, but now you know what to do.”

“… I won’t.”

“Then good bye; we won’t be able to speak again”, you say, turning your back.

“Why not?”

“Because you won’t.”

And you leave. And she stays. You won’t know if she decides to see one day. And if she does, she won’t know where you went, nor will she care, with the things she’ll see. You don’t know each other. You won’t, either.