Seeing and Believing

You keep your eyes shut,
Squeezing the lids together,
Not lightly, with some extra force.
Just to make sure the light doesn’t come in.

You move through the world slowly,
Touching the walls with your fingers,
Trying not to let go of the surfaces,
Avoiding the terrifying weightlessness
Of swinging your arms around
When there is no contact to guide you.

During the day, the light is too much.
So painful when it bursts inside your skull,
When you crack your eyes open even slightly.
It scorches and torches your brain,
And it makes you scream like a baby,
Bathed in boiling water.
Better to keep them shut.

During the night, the darkness is so scary,
Again better to keep the lids closed tightly.
Who needs to see the terror all around?
The darkness petrifies and freezes you.
Much better to crawl through it blindly.
No need to stop and face what’s there.

You count your fingers, one hand at a time.
Five here, five here. Let’s count the toes as well.
Ten. Still ten. Good. Can never be sure if it hasn’t changed.
Maybe one more time.
Ten and ten. Soothing to know.
Don’t indulge too much.
Got to keep crawling against the wall.

There was a man once who insisted
That eyes are meant for seeing.
That the world around is beautiful to observe.
That venturing away from the wall is possible.
That you can count your fingers just by looking at them.
And that they are all still there
Even when you’re not touching the wall.

So you grabbed him with all your might.
Shouting liar, liar.
You picked up the first hard and heavy object you could reach
And brought it down on his face again and again
Until it felt soft like dough and you pulled
His eyeballs out and ate them.

That person was your child!
How embarrassing.
Nobody needs to see that.
Let’s count our toes again.