It was a perverse pleasure him playing a sight-diminished man
and
if the sunlight was strong enough he became a blind man cautiously negotiating his
surroundings
Yes it was perverse though possibly only because he adored his
sight
if it were an idol hed prostrate
himself on his knees lay on his belly in subjugation
and if it wanted
hed sacrifice
animals human animals for its pleasure
his Sight was God
he ached anticipated his temporary blindness
it piqued him as he walked down
the long hill to the street where
his mailbox was mounted on a square post stabbed into the parkway before a
neighbors house
he read as he descended
the
books white pages reflected the bright sun up into his eyes served as an
interrogators naked dangling bulb in the midst of the days torture
he laid his handwritten
correspondences on their manilla edges
clasped the box and pulled up the
metal red flag that forewarned the postman of outgoing mail which was now ridiculous to the postman unnecessarily redundant
he rarely arrived at the box without parcels of
mail tendered for collection
the unseen man who lived high on top
the hill apparently had a lot to say every letter was stamped again
and again
the envelopes stuffed like
sausage casings
climbing the hill as he read his
breath quickened though not by his
exertion
he crossed the front porch to the
screen door and only then just before turning the doorknob to enter the house
did he stop reading he
tenderly shut the book a slip of random
paper to mark his place
the heavy black screen door
groaned
someone else might have oiled
it but he enjoyed its belligerent protest and thought laughed You cranky bastard
entering
he goes into his tittering
humoured blindness
he can feel his sight drain dribble
down onto his cheeks
deep gray stands on black
the rooms white walls are
vagrants shadows wearing badges where
pictures hung
on the carpet a cats toy lays
like an emaciated snake the feast of a small
mouse in its thin patient jaws
the coffee table a shape gown out
of the floor is crowded with gaping maws laughing mouths sheaves of corrupted
black skins and darts shaken free from their backs and humped shoulders or
spent porcupine quills who started in fright and ran to hide from him
a trembling nocturne of silence rises
too soon the blindness artlessly
unfurls
quicker than he wants
giving way to the acrid bleach of day that penetrates the blinds and loose curtains seeping in like a stubborn virus
a white mould
as his seeing returns viscerally it reminds him how he tries to invoke another
blindness with his moltenlit candlelight evenings or by the yellow and orange tonguelashed
flames flickering in the firebox
he would never want to be blind
he simply enjoyed the tenuous vague
shapes that came and haunted the smeared darkness embracing him as how a childhoods cloak and long coarse scarf did as they tried to thwart the harsh cold and let play the silvered phantoms dancing in his breath
1247, Monday,
28 9. 15
