20/20 Remnant (Draft)
At eight years old, I looked through corrective lenses to see the hard edges of leaves for the first time. The world had boundaries. And I provoked myopia to survive my youth. For years, without choice, I abstained from children’s circular harmonies, filled it all with opaque static, the unheard notes accumulating
into a hard brown line etched into my stomach lining. The line soon hardened into the heavy weight of scar tissue, the foundation for a steadily growing wall of thorns I unconsciously grew.
Even when I ran to a place where winter made leaves disappear into the grey-brown of concrete coated in dirty snow, I still carried that weight.
I started to believe that maybe, no light could cause its dissolution, and no matter how much I breathe warmth and lovely noise into the space that’s me, I cannot reach past it.
We say rage burns, or bubbles, but what about when it turns to fuzz? To static? How do I excavate it when it was buried by a child who couldn’t understand, who obscured its boundaries until they couldn’t be seen at all?
Maybe, if I remove my contact lenses, and maybe, if I stare into the blurred outlines of boundaries all unmade, I will get a peek into the darkness that etched the line and planted my wall’s seeds.
Maybe, if I embrace the darkness tightly enough, if I swaddle it in blankets scented like days of fear, when I smiled just out of tune, I can uncover the line. And maybe, if I put on a new pair of glasses, frames the color of spring leaves, and maybe, after I have tripped enough times because what is flat appears round and I can’t quite tell where the ground begins or ends, when I put back in my artificially clear eyes, the wall will have shrivelled, its seeds nurtured into dormancy