The Eternal Spring

The first time I got eyeglasses,

I was 7 years old.

When I stepped outside

and saw

every green leaf

on the trees, I cried

sorrowful tears for the years

I spent believing the world was built

like a Monet painting, all faceless

figures and blurry edges.

I asked, was everything always this beautiful?

That day, I learned

my brother has a brown beauty mark

above his lip. I learned

my father’s hair was greying.

For the first time, the sunset was not a gradient

of orange and blue: instead,

a raver’s light show, with beams and wisps

of hues I had never dreamed existed,

an eternal spring

rejoining the horizon

each day at dusk.

It felt like I’d been given a sixth sense,

this immense honor

awarded to me

not by the optometrist, but by the hand of God.

The sun-faded white-washed wood of my childhood bedroom set;

the green in my parents veins, evidence of our

heritage;

the faded blue-black tattoo

on my Opa’s forearm from the Korean War

— Theresea — my grandmother

whom I would never meet;

the blue haze of the Cherokee

mountains;

This place and these people

I had forever called home,

I saw

for the first time.

I did not know

I would grow to be l e g a l l y b l i n d.

I did not know

my communion with color could

be laid to rest by failed biological machinery.

But I discovered that

love is not blind.

Love sees like the mantis shrimp: in six axes of color,

with a richness that always exists —

even when we cannot view it.

And someday, if my vision leaves me

alone in darkness,

I will not worry —

for I have witnessed

the eternal spring,

and I do not fear dusk.