i burnt out my own eyes, u’know
i’d 74 years of sight, didn’t get me too far
things started going grey, fuzzy around the edges
i figured “why wait?”
i went outside
bright day, vivid colors. my eyes were too dim to read but i could still tell. you never forget that blue
i opened my eyes & didn’t blink once. not like i’d any reason to. nothing to protect anymore.
nah, i opened my eyes wide & stared right into the sun
i wanted my last vision to be perfect. a naked thing, something raw. Power.
& it was perfect. i regret i didn’t do it sooner
i spent my whole life with my nose buried in books, you know. looking for answers, studying around things. not much a use for eyes, eh?
i scratched and puzzled and looked and looked. that’s 74 years of looking. that’s a long time.
i studied questions.
people’ve been asking questions, turns out, as long as people’ve been talking. beating their brains out about what is good, what is bad, what is right, how do i do better.
they found a million answers and more questions. that’s fine. some of them died happy. many miserable
but there’s a big screaming answer in the sky. there’s one thing beating down on all our heads we’re not allowed to look at. that giant star screaming at us: “LIVE! LIVE!”
she’s the reason we’ve eyes. she won’t let us use ’em on her.
it’s a riddle without an answer or meaning
it’s that thing that pushes people to move without them knowing why. it just is. the longer we stare at the why the blinder we get.
a last look at one shining truth is all i wanted.
staring at the sun, you know, your vision fades from the center of the light
like an eclipse, but it’s growing from the middle of the brightest light. the little receptors right on the sun burn out first, then the rest of the world fades growing out from there.
i told you i didn’t blink once, right?
nah. my eyes streamed tears the whole time.
it didn’t hurt. part of it was just the body acting as a body does, trying to protect itself. but when you don’t blink those tears stream right down your face. i stood crying. and it was crying. there was something more there than simple physical reaction. a welling
i cried. didn’t wipe a single tear away either. little rivers in my wrinkles, hah.
nah, there was an emotion there. more than sad or happy. it was part both, not either. overwhelming gratitude. submission. defiance. sounds a contradiction, mmh?
i think that’s the point
you know men spend their whole lives researching the sun without ever getting in a good look.
they filter her through a million spectra. read her math. they see everything about this star except for the star herself. i think it’s funny. all that study, and never the thing itself
no. i spent 74 years looking for answers, and 74 years was enough.
that’s long enough to know
it’s enough time to articulate a couple questions a little better than anyone before you, then croak out a couple years of clarification. not answers. just rephrasings. then die.
consider my eyes a little gift to my romantic side. something small to settle my frustrations so i don’t end up squinting into the twilight, giving myself headaches.
i looked her square in the eye. there’s nothing to see. you look at the question too long it disappears or you do
