Sight
My best friend Charley was allergic to sunlight. I keep his photos
in milk cartons by the window, my little mole man under a hood
and baseball cap, only his librarian glasses showing. Charley and I
shared a room. He painted his eyes everywhere, told me to leave
mine open since I was the kid who fell down stairs, broke my back
in three places. At night, I'd come home to valerian steeping in
a teapot, see neon eyes on shirts, pillows, and muddy work boots,
perfect cat-green irises dilating in the room's darkness. Once,
Charley painted barracuda eyes on the tips of my swim fins
so I wouldn't trip. Last winter, he was moving a broken piano
across the street—the church left it at the curb for free. He may
have slipped because of the weight, the frost, the dump truck.
The sun struck the chrome bumper, the plunging light caught
the boy full of eyes when he wasn't looking.