Nearsighted

by aminutewithmichael

I have been near-sighted
my entire life.
For the earliest parts
of my life though, it wasn’t
readily apparent that I needed
glasses.
So I squinted my eyes and contorted
my face in squished up circles
to try and see what was in front of me.

This contortionist type way of seeing
the World; a blurry, fuzzy sort of
amorphous shaped place;
gave me a certain perspective.
I either had to be hyper focused on what
I was trying to see, or I would nearly
completely ignore it since I couldn’t see it.

Sometimes I could just make out
what it was I was supposed to be seeing,
other times, when the squint was failing,
I just had to give up and let it be whatever it
was without ever knowing for sure what
I saw.

I can only see to my knees
when I look down.
My feet are a little blurry.
I can almost see to the ends of
my fingers, but have to adjust it
in and out to see it clearly.
Yet, it didn’t bother me really.

I just let the World out of my field of
vision be the World that it was, without
my bearing witness to it.
There was something about it that became
philosophical, that I could only control
what I could see, and what I couldn’t see
was simply out of my control.

With my eyeglasses on,
I see too much.
Too much I don’t like.
Too much that causes pain.
Too much definition in the blurry,
gray areas, that never bothered me before.

In the blurry World,
there’s a blissful ignorance;
a sort of dumbed-down, muted,
fuzzy edged beauty to things,
that when brought into focus
seem to lose their unfocused luster.

But once you see the World,
and all its hard blemishes, scars,
and sharp edges,
you can’t
unsee
it.