The Walleye Magazine

The summer I went blind

By Holly Haggarty

the sky blurred with smoke and the sun narrowed to a slow round blot like a child might paint on paper

and the haze crept down till it seemed I looked out through thick-filmed spectacles to an unwashed world in drought of colour

birch leaves that unfurled so sticky and wet with hope too soon aged, spotted, patched

the apples tried a few scattered blooms but then curled to sleep, all alone without fruit

until a radio host insisted otherwise I forgot my bushes— spirea, viburnum, astilbe— once flowered purple-pink

the only florals left in my strips of crumbly ground were curlicues of styrofoam that drifted like petals after a neighbour, one garbage day put out a colossal ripped box— a gift that kept on giving

white industrial blooms— but nothing is white really white paint, white sheets, even wedding white gowns are blushed pink or tinged blue or bleached yellow like peroxide hair going grey like the dingy concrete steps

I sat on, afternoons, picking time

grey was the new white

across the road houses lined up like coffin plots shrouded in cigarette gauze grey-beige roofs, grey-tan sides

oh summer’s end, signs sprouted through the parched grass red and orange, green and blue but I say this by rote for they were not colours I saw but positions— wooden sabres, cardboard shields— weapons for the impending Armageddon

TheBeat

en-ca

2021-11-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-11-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://thewalleye.pressreader.com/article/283188676619132

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