Seven Summers into Life

She cracked one eye open at me. I should know better than to bother my older sister when she's napping. The hammock swayed slightly under her weight. "What?!" The word was more of a statement and less of a question, but I took it as encouragement anyway. "I caught a lizard! He's blue and green and orange and beautiful!" She sighed, like she had more important things to do than listen to her younger sibling natter on about lizards. She popped her gum. "Sure". I opened my hands cautiously, trying to show off but not release the lizard held captive between my gritty fingers.

The lizard's belly was bright blue even though his back was a boring brownish-green with the exception of bright orange spots around its ears. The cool lizard had warmed considerably on the walk up from the creek and exploded from my hands. It was gone before I even realized it was moving. I looked up at my sister with tears in my eyes. "Did you see it?" She smiled. "Sure did. Best I've seen all day."

Visionary

A man woke up one day from his afternoon slumber on the beach with the sun blinding in his eyes. And after the glare wore off, he noticed something was different. For the first time in his life he could see everything, everywhere, in minute and perfect detail. Every child, every parent, every intention and every betrayal lay open before him in crisp and unequivocal detail. Every success was chronicled in ripples of clarity. Every failure lay open. His heart swelled with the beauty and progress of humanity, and yet as he turned he saw the suffering of every starving child, every war fought for ideology, the violence, the despair, and the indifference of his fellow man.

Paralyzed by the enormity of it all, he squeezed his fists into his eyes and prayed for deliverance, for something to wipe away the images of the world that had burned their way into his retinas, until he ran screaming and clawing at the only set of eyes in the world that could see it in her entirety.