An Ode to my Spectacles

You and I, I must say,

have quite a love-hate relationship.

Since the fifth grade, I've had on my nose,

some goddamn plastic frame or the other.

You know, that as far I can remember, I've looked at the world

through a blurry frame. Through a clear-glass separation,

 a distance upon which I am dependant,

without which - what? I can count the number of fingers

laughing friends put up, but you know, you know -

the world looks to me like a watercolour painting

that hasn't been penned in, like a foggy day,

like raw confusion: and you know

how uncomfortable, insecure I am

how I pride my ability, in every other way,

to See. 

To see, to see, what does it mean to see?

Clarity and confusion balance, stumble,

on a single vowel that stretches across the sky -

the sky stretched out on a windy day

sometime last year over a classroom.

Atticus stood in a deserted, waiting street

and my literature teacher was solemn.
He pushed his glasses to his forehead; 

they slipped down, and he dropped them in the street. 

In the silence, I heard them crack. 

Atticus' glasses gave us room for a host of metaphors -

his wisdom, his ability to see clearly, more clearly,

than anybody else in Maycomb. Atticus' glasses

gave me hope for my own glasses - if life is poetry,

then my glasses are a metaphor for my vision,

my discomfort with blurry sight, an allegory.

If I'm writing this story, I gave myself glasses,

in a character sketch you will find them,

inseparable from me, adding all sorts of

interesting connotations to me as protagonist.

O spectacles, sitting regally,

on pimple-spotted nose,

result of prescription sheets shouting

Myopia, Astigmatism, little bleary-eyed child,

O spectacles, extension of my physical self

since age ten, how I hate being dependant, blind.

How I instinctively fiddle with the plastic frame

when I'm awkward with my hands,

how, when I cry, little salt-water droplets

sit on you like dewdrops, waiting to be wiped.

O spectacles, I do apologize,

for leaving you on the bathroom counter today, unloved.

Me, I take you off my weary nose only at night,

when the world is cloaked with darkness.

My personal watercolour painting of the world

will never be penned in, lights large and looming,

ink blots spreading across the canvas. Without you,

my eyes will show me only a constant foggy day,

an image of chaos.