“I’m the most desperate, lonely woman you will ever meet in your life, and I am blind. There is nothing more lonely than blind desperate loneliness. And I want them to feel it. I want them to know my loneliness.”
— K. E. Hansen
In the book you always hoped
to write, your life began with “The End,”
the day you lost your sight,
surgery meant to cure.
Those first weeks, you ignored doctors’
gloom and waited, expecting
any day for your sight
to return, to see again the red
roller coaster near your favorite surfing spot,
the pine green specks
in your boyfriend’s light brown eyes,
the charcoal you were using in your last sketch,
you now will never finish.
But the first time you are left
alone in the darkness you will see
for the rest of your life,
you feel a loneliness so profound, isolation
that nothing twenty-eight years
of sunlight and starlight
have prepared you for.
You feel buried alive,
trapped and terrified, alone and aware
as you will be until the day you die
that the world as you loved it
continuing around you
is gone to you forever.
Frantic at the thought of living
your life through,
you stumble around your mother’s home,
groping for the switches,
turning on every light you can find
with each flip praying
this will be the one.
When you knock over a china lamp,
which breaks apart at your feet,
you begin to cry, tears that tumble
down your cheeks for days,
and you crumble to the floor, screaming
to God, the questions you will ask
again and again, “Why? Why have you
done this? Why have you kept me
half dead?"
“Over twenty-five operations and losing my sight, this scares me most. I keep touching it. I can’t believe it will be gone tomorrow. I keep telling myself God must have a plan.”
— K. E. Hansen
Night before surgery, you tell me you’re scared,
really scared. Through four years’
friendship and more health scares
than I can count, I’ve never heard
you say this.
In the Christmas photo you sent
this year, you frolic
with your guide dog on the beach.
Clad in a white tank top and rolled-up jeans,
you stand balanced
in the surf, knees bent, back arched,
arm poised to throw
a stick. Your honey-colored hair streams
in the wind, water rushes round toned,
tanned calves. Below the photo, your words,
“Lover of life, come dance with me.”
Days after surgery, you’re bantering
already, asking your nurse,
“Could you check with the doctors
A-SAP
to see if hair is going to grow
out of my stump
and when I can shave
it?”
Below the knee, your right leg
gone, thick cover of bandages crisscrossing
the amputation site.
Intense pain
comes and goes.
You swear
you’re going to dance
again. Soon.
In your red pumps.
You have to settle
for black boots.
Against doctors’ wishes,
you’re dancing months
later, a benefit you’ve organized.
Doctors warn: injure remaining ankle,
may lose that foot, too,
skin so slow to heal,
steroid-brittle bones
caving in.
But tonight,
swaying to Kenny Loggins
in your boyfriend’s arms,
prosthetic leg barely noticeable beneath
black lace stockings,
pain of the last months
hidden in your laughter,
you draw all eyes in the room,
dancing lightly, naturally, blissfully,
as if you always will.
“There is no ugly flower on earth. They are all beautiful, and they know to look to the sun for their light.”
— K. E. Hansen
I wheel you into the sunny courtyard, a fusion
of bromeliads, ferns, palms. A dozen doors look
into the courtyard, yet I’ve never seen anyone
emerge. Residents lie wilted
in their beds.
Angling your wheelchair to maximize sun
and sitting on a bench nearby, I remember
many times I’ve sat with you as you sunbathed,
your skin, soaked
in lavender lotion, bronzing in the heat.
Stretched out bikini-clad,
you would tell me about your latest love.
Corey. Todd. Max. Names changed
often, your excitement
never did. We are quiet
now.
Planted in this nursing home, unwillingly
uprooted, you know well what's
ahead: TV (Animal Planet or Jeopardy),
dinner hour (corned beef or turkey), sleeping pill
(one—or two, if you get lucky). Your roommate
no longer speaks. Next door,
a woman in her nineties wails
for her mother, long since dead.
Yet at this moment,
past and future melting,
you lift
your face to the sun, brilliant
smile unfolding,
simply absorbing,
drinking warmth,
finding the nutrients
in the earth of your life.
