Spring 2025 - Vol. 22, Issue 2

As a kid, I wanted to be an owl

So my eyeballs would be static.

It hurt to move them too much

Although sometimes I wished

I could roll them so far

That I would be staring at my brain.

When I was a teenage insomniac,

I’d say my eyeballs were on fire

During the 8 A.M. class.

No wonder when I did college theatre,

I’d feel the burn of tears

But nothing came out.

People called me unemotional,

Said my eyes looked dead in pictures

Even when I tried to smize like a top model.

The cells in my eyeballs are dying,

And I think about retinal detachment frequently,

You would think I’d know

If the flashing and floaters are from that

And not my mind’s eye going wild,

But anxiety keeps you from seeing clearly.

I learned the vitreous can detach too—

My dad sent me a video of his vitrectomy,

And I couldn’t look at the close-ups,

Already haunted by the implication

Of bladeless LASIK and what if I needed the knife.

Could I gouge out an infected eye and

Offer it in my palm for power

Like some of my anime crushes?

Did I doom myself with temporary vision loss—

Multiple evanescent white dot syndrome—

In conceiving this poem?

Eye patches are sexy at least.