Nearsighted

 

I have been near-sighted

my entire life.

For the earliest parts

of my life though, it wasn’t

readily apparent that I needed

glasses.

So I squinted my eyes and contorted

my face in squished up circles

to try and see what was in front of me.

 

This contortionist type way of seeing

the World; a blurry, fuzzy sort of

amorphous shaped place;

gave me a certain perspective.

I either had to be hyper focused on what

I was trying to see, or I would nearly

completely ignore it since I couldn’t see it.

 

Sometimes I could just make out

what it was I was supposed to be seeing,

other times, when the squint was failing,

I just had to give up and let it be whatever it

was without ever knowing for sure what

I saw.

 

I can only see to my knees

when I look down.

My feet are a little blurry.

I can almost see to the ends of

my fingers, but have to adjust it

in and out to see it clearly.

Yet, it didn’t bother me really.

 

I just let the World out of my field of

vision be the World that it was, without

my bearing witness to it.

There was something about it that became

philosophical, that I could only control

what I could see, and what I couldn’t see

was simply out of my control.

 

With my eyeglasses on,

I see too much.

Too much I don’t like.

Too much that causes pain.

Too much definition in the blurry,

gray areas, that never bothered me before.

In the blurry World,

there’s a blissful ignorance;

a sort of dumbed-down, muted,

fuzzy edged beauty to things,

that when brought into focus

seem to lose their unfocused luster.

 

But once you see the World,

and all its hard blemishes, scars,

and sharp edges,

you can’t

unsee

it.