Mojave River Review - Winter 2014

But visual sense is a different order of being; there is a reason we have privileged the ocular and—no matter how unjust—feared the sightless.

I see, therefore I am.

I am, therefore I see.

The pupil is a black hole burning with unparalleled intensity and verve while visually consuming everything in its view.

Tendrils of nerves, tiny electric arcs, connect macula to retina, iris to cornea, lens to zonules; these fragile strands form a network of communication and recognition, emplacing body and self in time and space. An ocular milky way of cells and blood and diaphanous tissue hangs in this neatly contained inner galaxy like the shiny, tattered remains of a supernova, all color and light and pulsating energy.

Then one day, crack! Retinal detachment, and your life no longer looks as it once did, and you no longer look as you once did.

A sickening crash in your cranium like metal grating on concrete, like shattered bone, like Arctic ice shivering awake in the warm breath of spring. The universe inside your head explodes, or maybe it implodes.

Your eye hurls itself toward the untouchable horizon, or maybe it disintegrates into cosmic dust. Delicately interwoven threads unravel and the interlocking organic puzzle pieces, so carefully choreographed, fall apart. A confusion of signals.

Macula rips away from retina, orphaning the lens and sending blood cells and neurons and vitreous fluid surging down 13