I can look into a woman’s eyes and touch her demeanor. I can see a man’s color not on his arms, but within his dark, yet revealing pupils. Eyes are all I have to see. Sometimes they show me a purple, maroon, or a loud orange, but I can always see someone’s soul in the eyes – its color, warmth, and character. But I have only ever once truly seen an animal’s color.


Incheon, South Korea gives me a headache. There are ports to the west, cities to the east, and, when industry and commuting are at its peak, unpleasant, humid air invades it. In this chaos, however, a hill rises above sea level to gasp for air. It is the hill on which my grandparents’ house stands, on where I ran, fell, picked myself back up, and where the bustling Su-Bong Park lives.


Speaking of chaos, my grandfather woke me up at 5 AM one morning, as he usually does. Thank God I had the bubbling youth in me to take up his offer to go to the park; if I was any older than six I would have flailed and complained in angst. And so we walked. Dew routinely wandered off its rightful place on the blades of grass and onto the wooden pathways leading up to the top of the park, and occasionally I would fall victim to its mischief and slip, but I never scraped my knee once. On that particular morning, the sun wanted to play peekaboo with me through the trees, and the cherry blossom petals would tickle me as they traveled down to greet Earth. Birds constantly interrupted the trees’ conversations.

We ran through the paths and traveled, step by step, to a higher altitude. Sometimes we would stop at a bench, take out a paper bag of crumbs, and feed the pigeons, but we dared not go near the pigeon house, else we would have been ravaged by a tempest of feathers and flapping. We resumed our walk up to the top of the park, but my chubby little legs lacked the stamina of my grandfather’s lean physique. I fell behind, the trees surrounding me, the stones beneath my bare feet tickling my toes. As I walked to catch up to pops, she found me.

Her orange coat shimmered with water and her white gloves bore an arctic hue. I stood still, silent, and the cat mimicked me. Her tail was raised, hair on ends, gently oscillating with the wind as if in contemplation of what to do next, but I didn’t think much of her until I saw her eyes.

Flames tickled the roof of her pupils’ caves, stalagmite writhing, limestone weeping. Water became more mercurial than ever, fleeing in gaseous form as her fire burned on. Fertile soil was her iris, containing the fire that churned, in all directions, consuming, devouring, intimidating. As the sun cowered behind the clouds in fear, her pupils expanded to accommodate the inferno.

But I stopped, because the fire stopped. It gave out as quickly as it burned. It must have seen the water in my eyes, silent but powerful, so blue that it was black. I looked back in its eyes once more. It didn’t feel hot this time. It felt warm, like an invitation. I staggered forward.

She left. I walked forward slowly, thinking. I didn’t want her to leave. She had a quiet method about her, evaluating me, criticizing me, and yet admiring me with her eyes. I never knew what to think of it, and I never saw her again. I hope her fire didn’t burn the park; its color still lives in my memory - a modest red with a furious orange that turned into a warm yellow.

I have four cats, all with blue or green eyes, but I never see the same fire that I saw in her. I now know that I have simply stopped seeing my own emotion reflected back at me when I observe eyes, but I miss it. I miss the magic when my fire mixes with another’s, uninterrupted by conversation. I miss how I would see something in a cat’s eyes, like her’s, that I could never see in a human’s. I miss how two souls would flirt with one another, conjoined in space, projected by a seemingly unpromising, abyssal black pupil.

I miss the intangible touch.