CW: none.

There’s an eye in the back of my husband’s head.

It opens only after he’s fallen asleep, lid splitting silent as a dream in the night.

My husband’s eyes are amber, no brighter than a penny in the sun. The eye on the back of his head is different. It looks out at me through his dark hair, pupil white and glowing, drifting in a sea-dark jelly.

The first time I saw it, I thought it was just another nightmare. Anxiety and paranoia have always danced through my head, day and night. Seeing movement on his head, faced away from me, catching a glimpse of that lighthouse eye before shutting my own, rolling over, praying . . . for a moment, I wondered if I had brought it to life, my fear warping reality, conjuring it, even.

Surely just a nightmare, no more than that.

But one evening, hunkered under my booklight and regretting affogato, I heard a wet parting. Glanced over, down. Saw the pupil float up, staring at me. It was not round, like I thought. Triangular, it bored into me.

I went very still, breath shallow, rapid. Closed my book. Even when I turned the light off, yes, the secret eye emitted a little glow, white as snow.

“Are you real?” I barely heard myself ask it. It could’ve just been a thought in my mind. If the eye hadn’t reacted.

Around and around, the eye spun like a top, whirling faster than I could track. When it came to a stop, a word was written on the white of the pupil: Yes.

Every night since, I’ve asked questions, things I’d never dream of asking my husband in the light of day.

Does he still love me?

Why is he so scared?

Can I help?

Without a doubt.

Better not tell you now.

Ask again later.

That’s the one that comes up the most. Even in sleep, he refuses vulnerability. Days and weeks and star-endingly long years spent tight-lipped, strained, sad; it seemed our nights had become the same.

But where my husband shuts down, at least the eye tries.

At least the eye is okay not knowing, not pretending. It sets boundaries when a question isn’t the right one or it’s not the right time and I respect them. My husband could learn a thing or two from that gaze of his that only looks at me; me, and nothing else.

I’ve tried talking with him about it and like everything else too real, too important, he won’t engage. Moves away to topics he has control over, to things that bring him joy, not uncertainty. He has fashioned armor from banality and small talk and those deep fears, guarding his heart, even from me.

Well, I’m tired of being ignored, held at arm’s length. So, I’ve told the eye my plan. It listened with liquid patience. When I asked if it was a good idea, it said, Signs point to yes.

I’m going to do it. I’ll roll over and sleep on my side. Face away from him tonight and every night, hoping, praying that when he rolls over to hold me or ask where I went, he will see what I’ve seen so many, many nights now: an eye of my own.

I hope there will be an eye on the back of my head, bright, unyielding, inescapable.

I hope it will look at him through my tangle of dark hair, unblinking, waiting, ready.

I hope it will tell him the truth he refuses to hear, the kind that gets in, burrows, bursts him free of this armor.

Outlook good?

We’ll find out.

Together.