Before I had clear eyes I had unclear eyes. They sat, rooted deep within my skull, crossed and far too close together, like rabbit droppings sinking into a bowl of custard. Or a bowl of mustard. Something yellow.
They sat there, my eyes, etched with the scratches from lovers’ sharp fingernails:
The lady, and she was a lady, who resisted all of my attempts at seduction. Until diamonds softened her and mink stoles stole her.
The boy, over eighteen, with fingers like lollipop sticks, with a knob like a lollipop stick. Who fell into me, fell right into me.
The large woman, the BBW, who I stalked online, who wore razor-bladed gloves as protection from her stalkers. Ample but not ample enough protection from me.
The old gentleman, my gentleman caller, who hadn’t cut his fingernails in thirty years, who pushed them hard through all of my hairs.
The small horse with cat-like tendencies.
Etc.
Between us, my eyes and I had seen some things. Some awful things, some terrible things. Through scratches we saw the world as an old film. Sepia. We looked at the world and wondered at our place within it. Those eyes, for a while, they liked to cry. Wet tears running through those scratches: salty canals where new life formed: bacteria and microbes and microscopic planets, each one teeming with its own teeming life.
No wonder I couldn’t see.
The Whistling Glass: Fictions 