Eye

It started during the part where it mattered.

Right in the middle of talking about

something that meant something to me,

my eye started to twitch.

Not a small thing.

A visible thing.

A thing they could see.

Their eyes landed on it,

then looked away quickly,

like they'd walked in on something private,

something they weren't supposed to witness.

I kept talking.

The twitch kept going.

I was so aware of it

that I became aware of their awareness of it,

and then I became aware

of them trying not to be aware of it.

Three layers of embarrassment.

Three layers of my body

refusing to cooperate with what I needed it to do—

which was to be normal,

to be present,

to not announce itself

in the middle of a conversation

that I was trying to get right.

But it did.

My body did what it wanted.

And they were kind enough to pretend

they didn't notice,

which somehow made it worse.