literature

Light Waves Will Find Me

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Literature Text

“All I see,” Jordan muses, “is a floating silhouette.”

 

For I’m not sure what reason, I am standing astride his lower legs as he reclines in bed. I bounce experimentally on the balls of my feet, testing my balance on the mattress.

 

“You can see me?”

 

“Yes, because there’s a little light in the window.”

 

Bounce.

 

“Oh yeah, I forgot. So much for this sitting in the dark experiment.”

 

Bounce. I turn to look over my shoulder.

 

“I can kind of see that,actually. My night vision is oddly clear now and then. My pupils open up even more than yours because they’re trying to find light. Sometimes it’s startling, but mostly it’s kind of cool. Maybe I’m secretly a cat.”

 

I reposition. Bounce again. Even as Jordan’s breathing remains steady, I know he’s amused.

 

“This probably sounds crazy, but sometimes I sense a faint light source when I’m in the shower and have forgotten to turn on the light. I always wondered whether I might be imagining that—you know, because my eyes try to process so much that maybe I see things that aren’t exactly there. Like, memories of how I know things should look.”

 

I’m rambling. I know it. But he never seems to mind. After all, this is the seamless way of conversation between lovers; any moment now, he’ll take the helm with another equally random idea, and we’ll chase it down the rabbit hole like always.

 

“Unless you’re underground somewhere,” he says, “total darkness is almost impossible.”

 

“But there aren’t any windows in my bathroom,” I remind him. “And it happens at night when none of the lights is on.”

 

Curious, I move to a sitting position, then curl up next to him, all ears.

 

“I’m not really sure what you might be seeing in that particular situation,” he continues, splaying my hands possessively across his chest. “But light will diffuse. So even if you’re in a room with no windows, it will filter in through the door crack from elsewhere in your house.”

 

“Anyone I’ve asked says being totally blind isn’t quite like being in total darkness. I wonder if that’s part of why? Like, the light seeps in through the cracks between eye and socket so that we sense it beyond seeing?”

 

“No idea. But I mean, you’ll still respond to light even when you can’t see it.”

 

“Yeah, I know I’ll still feel light in my eyes sometimes, the way I sense it on my skin. The pain you feel when it’s too bright out—that’s more feeling than seeing. That sun’s a son of a bitch. But I wonder what total blindness will actually look like. I’ll let you know when it’s my turn.”

 

And then, a brief silence.

 

There are ghosts in my words—we both know it—but I’ve more or less accepted my fate by now. Grief comes in smatterings, like when I realize I can’t see something I used to be able to, or when I mourn the woes of ableism and discrimination, or when questions come to me unbidden, like what I’ll do when I’m spooked at night and can’t flip a light switch for reassurance. But whether in spite of my blindness, or because of it, or independently of it, or some combination of those, I live a full life.

 

I bask in the warmth of our closeness, , tuning my ears to the quiet thrill in Jordan’s voice as he crosses the line between knowledge and passion. Not for the first time, I reflect how he brightens my world in a way that no visible light ever could.

 

                                         

“There’s the light switch,” I think to myself, adding tonight to my ever-growing list of buoying moments. There are times I feel overwhelmed by the darkness—or rather by my darkness—but light waves will find me even as I cease to see them.

Written December 22, 2015.
© 2015 - 2024 hopeburnsblue
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KwisatzHaddascratch's avatar
Did I not fave this before?! Oh no