Will Arbery

Going Blind

I forgot how to count. I was dipping my hand into a bowl of rice and I felt like my hand was in a cast made of living insects. There was no single grain of rice. I couldn't imagine any edges. Soon everything became enclosed, like jelly. The refrigerator did not end, and became the china cabinet. There was no such thing as either. Nothing ended, nothing began. My dog was a sofa. My own feet were a stack of National Geographics. Cabinets did not open. Cabinets were plates, and, once, a cockroach. Everything was a deep hole near which I was always lingering. I looked for cold, cold places. I looked for eggs. I could still count eggs when they were cold, sitting five or six to a fist, truced in precious balance. I imagined them brown. I stood by the cold unopening of the non-refrigerator and counted, but when one egg fell, they all did, and I ran my hands sobbing through dripping tile until they became sand.