Tasha Chemel

PLANET OF THE INTERMITTANTLY BLIND

Listen to Audio Version read by Melissa Cotter.

"If I don't believe in my "impaired" self, I don't believe in any human capacity–forget perfection, being cured–life with all its physical diversity is the signature of stories. Not to understand this is an imprisonment of imagination."

–Stephen Kuusisto

I.
You rented a motorbike in Greece,
Cementing the illusion of sight
by following the rectangle of your friend's jacket.
I sat in my Educating In and Through the Arts class
At Harvard, believing that if I opened my third eye wide enough
I'd see the second grader's rendition of Starry Night
On my professor's Power Point. I petitioned Disability Services
To take a photography class
And they erased my request through sleight of hand and gestural violence.
I wanted to take that class because I wanted to pretend to see.
I played my game of chicken,
and flinched, and cried, and lost.
This doesn't mean I won't play again.
Some of us can't help pretending.

II.
I've journeyed across two mountains and three continents
to meet the witch who will cure my blindness.
The minute she raises her hand to my eyes, I stop her.
"I can't do this. I can't be complicit in the destruction of my impaired self."
"No one is saying anything about destruction," she replies. "Only queerness, only transition.
You want to stop your blindness from screaming."
My witch has read Eli Clare.

III.
When I saw jellyfish for the first time,
or the grain of the desk, or my mother's hand
I think I came close to what you called a "living curve of joy."
I also scared the living shit out of myself.
Drunk on details I had no right to perceive.
"It's all right," Jon said.
"You are not your brain."
But I'm spread too thin:
a piece of tissue paper in that '90s children's game
waiting to buckle, waiting to break.

Is my story impaired enough for you?

Tasha Chemel is a teacher, poet, and potter. She has been totally blind since birth, but identifies as transabled. She hopes that her work will open the door for other transabled people to come forward. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.