In our society, we are defined very much
by the sicknesses we hold. ADD, OCD, lactose intolerance,
things that two-hundred years ago, would have qualified us only
to be called healthy, because none of these are terminal.
My eyes swell from time to time
sometimes when they’re irritated
but mostly just when they feel the need to get my attention.
“We’re still here, and we’re rather important.”
When I was eight years old I took the thick tie of a bathrobe
and tied it twice tightly around my head, pushing my eyes back into
their sockets and making a hum of pain
flow through my brain until I could hear nothing else
and then laid in my bed until the humming itself
became nothing.
It was a Saturday, the only day my mother didn’t pay attention to my eating habits
and she was at work, so I was free to experiment with this body of mine.
I kept the robe rope over my eyes for the whole day and night
trying to get a glimpse of what the blind feel like.
The next morning laying in bed,
I removed the robe and found my eyes had crusted over
so thick I couldn’t open them.
I would have cried, but my mom told me not to, so instead I laughed
but only for a minute. I couldn’t see the bruises on my skin
that my siblings had made the day before
when they figured out my game,
but I knew they were there. I couldn’t see the blood on my pillow
from where I cut my ear
on something hard and wood sounding
as I fell down the stairs for the second time.
I couldn’t see the cake icing on my cheek that I was sure I’d washed away
and I couldn’t see my mother, but I knew she was there.
Occasionally, she dropped water and some kind of lacquer
onto my eyes and let it sit to loosen my bodies self-defenses.
“Am I gonna go blind,” I asked. And my mother lied,
“I don’t know.” She waited for a moment, the way people calculate
how exactly to teach a lesson and said, “was it worth it?”
I whispered, somberly, but with conviction
that I had to know. I had to know.