the eye doctor

The eye doctor is gentle and always says please.
Please now, rest your chin on the black plastic disc,
center your forehead and stare straight ahead.

As if the word rest could bring comfort,
as if I could close my eyes
in this black plastic muzzle and snore.

I suddenly remember my eyes as round.

He is looking through, to the backs of my retinas,
at rods and cones and optic disks --
the pathways to reflection etched before I was born.

My eyes are watering from the sharp absence of blink,
but I don’t. And then I do. Blink.

I pretend that the flickering pulse of light
is a distant star, and I am only
one science fiction moment away from the milky way
splayed out around me --
all of that black cavernous space
instead of these tight elbows of robotic arms.

I am remembering how blind I have been, seeing
the succession of patting doctor’s hands,
the sharp bright light of bad news.
Sympathy makes space between vowels:
No, no, not this time.

I wonder why it is the very thing that we try not to think
when we don’t want to cry that makes us cry.

I find myself blurry at the eye-chart.

I can’t identify a single sculpted S,
and when the mustachioed man with the soft voice
asks if I’ve always had those scars deep
on the backside of my retinas,
I am still mute.
He continues asking the unanswerable questions.
Better? Or worse? Better? Or worse?

I do everything the eye doctor asks.
I even show him how his photograph of the eyeball,
a fiery explosion of lava, moon and dust,
looks exactly like a supernova.

And when he laughs,
softer still,
I realize that I’ve made him see something he couldn’t before.

Dry and dilated, I feel my way into the blinding sun.
I make sure, then, to remember that I have cried.
I have cried for one light year,
and twenty minutes of wet relief
have made me squint again.