I like to stare at the Ikea light fixture in the living room,

letting the middle bulb sink into my shallow eyes.

I look until it starts to hurt, my ripped fingernails gripping

the worn suede of the couch as pupils get lost in

the dangerous yellow. For a moment I think of the

solar eclipse, when I looked at the sunlight with no barriers,

staring death in the face with a veil of night drawn over it,

laying on an inner tube in the middle of the lake with

hands of Tootsie pops and a friend.

It was easy to like it.

The raft we lie on drifts to sitting on top of Oakhurst

monkey bars, being upside down bats and not fighting

with mom. Then to the static of the slide as it lifts my

eight year old hair away from everything. If I went back

to the slide, it wouldn’t lift my hair again. For some reason

I just know that.

I finally look away from the light, uneven fingernails

loosening their hold. Nothing is left in my gaze but spots of

yellow and purple.

I try to blink them away, but the spots grow and

consume everything. My preschool picture in that

pink embroidered dress that I would twirl in as my

parents lifted me above the hammock that is now

consumed by ivy, the empty holes in the mantel where

stockings hung precariously, hearth melting the Ghirardelli

my cocoa-burnt tongue licked off shiny foil.

And my outstretched feet, almost as torn as my fingernails.

All I see is the yellow and purple, even when I close

my eyes. The hues creep into my lids until everything

about me is exposed to the dizzying colors.

I can’t see anything else. But it can see everything.

Maybe that’s easier.

Maybe it’s easier, but I miss that static and joy of fairy houses

in trees and stepping on raw pecans from the towering oak

above my sunburnt head, and Solo cups of white flannel caterpillars

that make little mouths scream for help when venom spreads

to unsuspecting knuckles. Pricked fingers would turn as

crimson as the overhanging mulberries by the curved concrete

wall, whereas now a pricked finger is sterile and cold in an

office, void of salt and unfamiliar in my teeth as I

fake a smile at whoever is behind the two-way mirror.

I’ve forgotten what side of it I’m on.

I’ve forgotten a lot of things.

I used to look into the light and enjoy the geometric patterns

that spread across my vision as soon as I looked away.

Nothing was obscured by the colors, only enhanced and made

into a masterpiece I could never recreate. Blinking made the patterns

even better. Blinking also made them go away eventually.

Now, the patterns blind me and reach past my large pupils

and cover up the wooden rings in my irises. Everything horrible that

my eyes touch is still there even after I close them.

I still blink anyways.