Blind But Not Forgotten

It is all gone.

Lost.

My package.

My vision.

The way I used to feel

Before the marble

Fell.

Gone.

Christmas is coming

And I don’t want

A tree.

I don’t want packages or candy,

Or stockings,

Or anything at all,

But to be able to see again.

It’s funny how your wants

Can change in an instant.

What used to be fun,

Isn’t.

What used to be easy,

Isn’t.

Now, I squint in stores

And make my way down aisles

With a look on my face so contorted

It makes the clerks ask if I’m o.k.

“I’m not,” I tell them.

I have a concussion.

And being in your store

Is like surviving a war.

Only the bombs going off are screaming babies

And the bullets are silver shopping carts

Coming right at me.

And the rows and rows of merchandise 

are a colorful gibberish

I can not translate. 

I hate my debilitation.

And yet, here I am

With no end in sight.

When a man walks quickly behind me

On his way into the same store,

I shudder.

Does he know?

Does he know?

Does he know I am impaired?

Does he know how much his pace scares me?

I am frightened he will run over me. 

I am moving as fast as I can,

Trying to make sense of the

Unsensable.

Trying to see what

Is only a blur to me now.

Just like all those damn Christmas tree lights. 

Coming Down

I am here,

here in the house with the lopsided floors

and the crooked roof

listening

to the whistle of the train

and the hum of my hard drive.

It is raining outside,

coming down

in quiet drops,

somewhere between a mist

and something grander.

This morning I got out of bed

in a haze,

a Benzo haze,

dragged myself to the kitchen

and made oatmeal

with blueberries and molasses.

I nearly burned it.

I am out of practice,

used to letting my lover do all the cooking.

Now, I cook and clean

and wish I had never gone to New York,

as if wishing could change anything.