[photograph of an eyeball on a computer screen, green and orange with a fringe of eyelash]
My retinal specialist/surgeon took a picture of my healing eyeball yesterday when I went in for my two-week check-up. Those are my eyelashes at the bottom and up to the left is where the retina tore and has been lasered. I imagined writing something all deep and insightful about the eye, how I'm looking at me looking or the eye is not like a planet but, rather, a planet, the planet, a globe of blood vessels, the macula, the retina, the optic nerve. No ableism here. Even if you can't see, you can see.
Take a look.
Before I got my eye put out (#336)
Before I got my eye put out
I liked as well to see—
As other Creatures, that have Eyes
And know no other way—
But were it told to me—Today—
That I might have the sky
For mine—I tell you that my Heart
Would split, for size of me—
The Meadows—mine —
The Mountains—mine —
All Forests—Stintless Stars—
As much of Noon as I could take
Between my finite eyes—
The Motions of the Dipping Birds—
The Morning’s Amber Road—
For mine—to look at when I liked—
The News would strike me dead—
So safer—guess—with just my soul
Upon the Window pane—
Where other Creatures put their eyes—
Incautious—of the Sun—
Emily Dickinson
[photograph of the eyeball, green and orange with a fringe of eyelash]