Cataracts

My eyes had broken.
“My pupils wince,” I said.
The doctor replied, “They seem to glare as well. Too much reflection produces glare─ perhaps you shouldn’t think so much.”
“It’s not that kind of reflection,” I said. “More like pollution, light clutter, sky-glow.” I could see that the doctor didn’t know one of these things from another. “At least admit there is such a thing as an excess of light,” I argued.
He narrowed his eyes and said, “Where exactly is this obesity located?”
“Any halo around any stoplight in the twilit city”
Pulling out a long thin needle, the doctor asked, “How long have you been seeing angels in stoplights?”

The Light Fantastic

Nevertheless, we make our home in a room lit by two candles. One flame glows while the other flickers. Your light stares like an interrogation; it never lets me sleep. Mine blinks and winks until the room closes its lids. We watch the moon in the window thicken like skin. Why should we fear the dark? We believe we’ve taken the bright inside us.

Bleed

Soon enough, my colors ran so I scraped them into a bag and buried the whole thing. They’ll bleed, you said.

Everything bleeds, I said, thinking of the clerk at the paint store. I had fallen for him but his heart was already broken so I let my dreams fade to black and white. I tried to love my grayscale life again, but it was no use. To restore my faith in color, I’d have to get my bag back. I searched for it in the dark, but found the clerk instead, standing in a hole, dirt mounded on all sides. His hands were in my stained bag. Scooping up the colors, he rubbed them all over his bare skin. When every inch of him had been ruined with stain, he tossed the rest into the air. My lost colors rained over his body. He took my breath away, the way he rose into the moonlight, glowing, my colors bleeding through.