In the skull, the place we called our home for all those years, lays the eye sockets. This marks the spot where my dead twin brother and I used to live. We eyes are the gateway to the soul. We are organs that fill the facial structure and function to promote human survival. I had a twin, who was just like me. We were both made of spherical liquid and solid balls, which sit in the skull and protrude through cupped sockets. We are sensory organs for sight that are both exposed and protected by bone. Inside the skull, we are cradled and cushioned by fat on all sides. There are flaps of tissue, where the flesh thins to a clear membrane, which covers us like a light blanket. We exist in a sack of salt water that keeps us moist and feeds us like a small child in a high chair. Our color comes from the iris, which is made of muscles that open or close the pupil. Our pupil allows light to enter us and stimulates our whole being with ticklish delight.

The body where my twin and I reside was born with bad plumbing and poor drainage. This body that we inhabit was born with a defect, something called glaucoma, a condition where the fluid around the eye builds up due to clogged or broken pipes. The result was that at 6 years old the pressure from all this fluid built up and caused my twin's death. Like a drowning or choking, he suffocated and permanently ceased functioning. This meant that my twin brother had lost his ability to offer sight. My twin no longer served any functional purpose for the body or perceived the world around him. Yet, he sat there sitting in his socket vacant, blank and empty. There was no pupil in his iris. He rested like a dead fish along the riverbanks, floating in this fluid, which had previously given him life. See all that excessive fluid caused pressure to build and cave in all around him. As the fluid around my twin grew stronger, it snapped his optic nerves apart like a string. It was like he was being pushed on from all sides until he popped. I remember seeing a boy at a fair that won a fish and was carrying it in a tiny bag filled with water. As the small boy ran in excitement to show his prize to his mom, he tripped, cut his hand and fell on his small treasure. The bag burst and the fish with all of its life giving water spilled out onto the cold gray concrete. The boy, frozen with a fearful grief, began to cry. He sat there in a puddle of tears and tap water. My brother just floated in the fluid that filled his home, hurt and broken.
  
I went along in life with my dead neighboring twin floating next to me for the next 2 decades. I knew something was wrong when the sclera had become a hot coal of cinnamon red capillaries. His iris had turned a cloudy albino white. All I could perceive of the situation was that something strange was happening in this body where we lived. His cornea was detaching. The cornea offers protection against anything that tries to get into the eye. You must understand that we eyes are autonomous organs in the body. The rest of this machine's immune system does not respond to us. We have our own efficient ways to recovery and healing. Yet my twin's cornea became lose and prepared to detach, like a skydiver waiting to jump from a plane. There was a traumatic vision of the future that caused me to widen and move quicker. As if I were being chased by a bear and fighting for my survival, I looked for escape. This previously unknown immune response of the body was revealed to my brother and me through his exposure. The result was that the body was planning an attack on my brother, as if he were a foreign bacteria. The onslaught would not end there. This revolt, from the very body I inhabit, would not end until I was paralyzed as well. I enjoy the sentiment and have a fondness for tradition and natural beauty. I had known my brother was not well, but had hoped to continue this journey with him by my side. We were born together and should leave together, even if he really was not all there in the first place. Alas, that did not appear to be my destiny. It was 3 months before my 30 th birthday when my brother was forever removed from my sight.

My new neighbor's role was clear, with the single purpose of looking good. But, there was the constant sting from my own vain sense of concern over how I would look with a fake, unnatural partner by my side. I remember looking around and realizing how much can change in a single day. Change happens in such a small span of time, yet it is the adjustment part that seems to endure over the weeks and months. The fake that has replaced my twin brother is made of porous plastic that is painted and then covered with porcelain. He is actually a one of a kind piece of handmade art. The painted pupil of black oil, the iris is a big sky blue on a chalky sclera of white. It is an exact duplication, replica, clone, spitting image of me. He never blurs no matter how much he is scratched or rubbed. He is indestructible and unnatural. Now and again, when kids stare at my fake's limited movement with fear and wonder, I become aware of what I had forgotten. See when my brother was around I was always looking after him. Stopping in front of a mirror and taking eye drops to reduce his flamboyant red dress. I was constantly attending to how this invisible condition is being seen by all. Now I do not even realize my twin brother is gone when I look in the mirror. My new neighbor was made just to look like me.

I definitely have to do more work than my neighbor, who just gets to sit there and look pretty. Yet, he does not do anything. I am the one who stares at the visions of loving relationships and the sight of despair of death. This thing of plastic is a false expression, a mask that covers this body's blindness. I look at our reflection and remember that nothing will endure, not our health or his sparkle. This cosmetic enhancement has no flesh, no blood. He is a placeholder that fills emptiness, by giving substance, where there is absence. He is a ghost that haunts me from within. He is not my brother, my twin. There is no manmade object that can replace what I have lost. The grief and mourning continue everyday. Every time I miss something. Every time this body bumps, trips or drops something, when I need to blink or the head turns away from the action. I remember you and your potential. I know now its up to me and that you are never coming back. The new neighbor of mine is part of a shrine to you my lost twin brother. A shrine, that lies in the body, keeping your spirit alive. He fills the void that you my dead and buried brother once filled. This mannequin, this prosthetic, the mask that covers the vacant space remaining from a once occupied socket. This is not a replacement. It's a shrine to an organ, which had always been sickly.

How long can one survive alone? How much can one body handle? I am sure there will be more illness and injury. I remember being a child and when the body would fall, picking up bruises and scraps, the wound would heal in a day or two. Now the aches and bruises last longer and the time to bounce back becomes longer. I have seen it in animals, its called survival instinct. So despite the discomfort, all things scab over and what can be seen is a mark on my flesh to remind me of the tumble I had taken. Its truly an amazing machine this body of mine, with all of its organs and specialized equipment. The machinery and magic that run beyond my sight, but keeps me moving, growing, and healing, this symbiotic machine that is as much part of me as I am it. Yet, is it all just a container and am I just the ghost inside? There are things I cannot envision or point to such as love, beauty, truth, justice, or honesty. I am left on my own as unique and insignificant as the leaves on the trees, to figure it out for myself. I am the ultimate observer, who watches the world's shapes and colors. They are as varied and diverse as the leaves fading to golden shades of orange and yellow on the tree's limb, underneath the sky filled with clouds shaped like balls of cotton. Their ivory curls hover overhead and cast shadows over the city streets. The hordes of commuters, cabbies, and criminals rush to find their way before the cream blue sky fades to plum. No one knows he is gone. What they all see is an identical eye, an indistinguishable twin. I alone know otherwise. I choose to focus on what I have, not what is missing. I look up with delight at the moonlight shining like a lamp, glowing down over the homes full of sleeping strangers all dreaming in different ways, flowing with fantasies about tomorrow that will be forgotten in an instant. As the rhythm of the world erupts, with the samba sound soothing my soul and bringing the comforting morning light. My rods and cones sense the sun sneaking into my room through the blinds, touching my cheek, bridging my dreams, which will soon fall away from sight. I cannot see the past unless it was in a dream. I am able to look out upon the vision of today. Letting this body breath in the light and blow out the color.