Eyes
(listen to the poem, read by the author)
One Friday night
The man who drove
my paratransit bus
told me,
“Your eyes are like Jesus’s eyes.”
How had our conversation wandered
from the weather
to Jesus?
Many drivers
Tell me
about how Jesus
Can Heal me
Convinced that sight
Is the cure.
Persuaded that sight is
The real knowing
While hearing, touch, smell
Is just guesswork.
But this driver was sure
I had some kind of psychic gift.
The only time
In my life
I’ve been called
A seer.
He either saw
My eyes closed
Or partially open,
unwavering blue.
Unwavering, because they are prosthetics.
Thick painted plastic shells, like contact lenses,
Blue, to mirror the eye color of my family.
I don’t think I was making photograph eyes at him,
Holding them too widely open.
I was in high school,
or maybe early college.
Old enough to know
I wouldn’t
ever
see.
Still young enough to wonder
If I could learn
to understand souls.
I wonder now
How I answered him.
I probably just said “thank you,”
Cheeks turning hot–for him in modesty–
For me in embarrassment,
The way I thank people
When they think
I’m a hero
For walking outside.
I didn’t tell him
the eyes are fake.
I didn’t tell him
when I hold my eyes open,
They look kind of scary.
I didn’t tell him
Jesus’s eyes were not plastic eyes.
I didn’t tell him
Jesus’s eyes were probably dark.
Were they dark?
Were Jesus’s eyes
The kind of eyes
Whose colors shifted
With His emotions,
With the weight of human suffering
And fleeting human joy
And that deeper divine happiness
Like ocean tides?
Or were they eyes
Children
and wanderers
and seekers,
the dispossessed
stared all the way into
like tossing a stone
into the bottom
of a deep, deep well?
Eyes that looked
Straight back at them
With His knowing?
Or were they eyes
No One really knew
Because no one
Could look at Him
And fully
understand Him
Until human
and maybe divine love
had touched them?
Since then I’ve learned
I will never understand a soul.
Interpreting my own soul
and holding onto understanding
Of myself
is almost impossible.
Touching another soul
for a day, a year, an era
Feeling the sculpture of a bird
And realizing it could be
A wave in the ocean.
Or that quiet lake.
Passing through
what we say
to what we think
to how we feel
to what we think we think
back to what you think
and how you feel
Leave me
in awe,
Learning more
And knowing less
Than I did before.
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About the Author
Kristen Witucki is totally blind and is the author of two works of fiction, The Transcriber and Outside Myself. Her fiction, poetry and nonfiction have appeared in Wordgathering, Brain, Child, and other publications. She is an accessibility specialist, a content creator, and a teacher of blind students, and she lives in New Jersey with her husband and three children.